


Brothers and Sons

by IgnorantArmies



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Found Family, Gen, Pre-Canon, Young!ARTHUR, as per usual
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2020-12-22 17:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21080321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IgnorantArmies/pseuds/IgnorantArmies
Summary: If you like your found-family stories full of angst and foreboding, you're in the right place.Let's start with how Arthur met Dutch...and Hosea...and Grimshaw... Except it's not the beginning. Not quite yet.





	1. Chapter 1

He watched his daddy hang.

A part of him hoped the old man would end with some kind of pride. Show some spine. Jut his chin at the sky and meet his maker like a man. But the bastard was whimpering by the end. Snot and tears all running down his face. Eyes wide and white. Begging the sheriff not to throw the lever. Promising all sorts. Making up all kinds of nonsense to try to save his sorry hide. Didn’t even look down at the crowd to see Arthur there. Probably would have tried to barter off his own son in exchange for his life if he had.

Arthur figured maybe that’s when you really saw what a person was made of - what stuffing they had inside of ‘em – right at the end, with nowhere to run. And, at eleven years old, an angry, choking lump in his throat, he made a promise that he would never go out like this. He’d keep himself a little dignity, keep a little fight in him to greet the reaper with. 

He watched his daddy hang, and it was no different from any other hanging, except the man’s neck didn’t break right away and there was that awful long minute of struggling with the crowd holding its breath all together, waiting for the eyes to bulge and the tongue to turn black and the legs to stop kicking.

Arthur didn’t cry. He might’ve, if that corpse had suddenly taken breath again; got up and gone back to being his shit of a father. But to see the man’s glassy eyes staring up at the sky was like a good riddance; like an exhale. This world was a better place without Lyle Morgan in it.

The boy should have felt free. Should have felt something. But he still wore a patchwork of bruises from the dead man’s fists and they wouldn’t fade for another week or two, as if the old bastard was still taunting him from the grave. He could still hear that low voice, full of gravel and spite, even as he turned his back on the scaffold. Calling him out. Cursing his name for a coward and a traitor and a murderer:

_You ran, boy. You saw them comin’ and you let ‘em take me. Ran like a dog. You’re the reason I got the rope. You’re the one who killed me._

Maybe it was true. Arthur couldn’t tell which way up anything was any more. If there was that much difference between right and wrong. If stealing counted if you were starving. If it was possible to still feel a primal kind of love for someone even while you hated ‘em with all your being. If killing someone and simply letting ‘em die amounted to the same thing.

There was water in his eyes, now, even though he tried to scrub it away. Behind him, he could hear the lawmen loading up his daddy’s body into a barrow and the thump of lifeless flesh sent a rush of bile up into his throat. He coughed, almost choked on it, and spit up into the dirt, bent double, hands braced on his knees. The crowd broke up around the boy, giving him a wide, distasteful berth. He knew he must look a mess and stink worse. Told himself he didn’t give two shits what anyone thought but still, it was a naked feeling. Being watched. Judged.

He looked up, feeling the crawl of eyes on him, and right into the face of a man on a tall black mare. Arthur readied himself to scramble out the way, expecting the whip, or a kick, or a harsh shout telling him to get the hell out of the thoroughfare. But the man just sat there, staring at him with a mild, curious kind of look.

“You alright there, son?”

The boy scowled and spat again, waiting for the churn of his stomach to calm. _Ain’t nobody’s son no more. _

“Don’t look the type to get queasy over a hanging,” the man observed. His gaze tracked thoughtfully across Arthur’s black eye, the dried blood caked on his collar, the swollen split where his lip had busted against his teeth; the last beating his daddy would ever give him – still fresh from a few nights before – and all because they’d run out of tobacco.

The boy didn’t reply. Gave his head a single shake, afraid to meet eyes with the soft-spoken horseman. There was a danger about the stranger, for all his finery – the tailored waistcoat, the silver pocket watch, the neatly-trimmed moustache – something of the wilderness in that unbroken stare, the way a wolf watches its prey. A lawman, maybe. Or a bounty hunter. Maybe something worse.

Arthur braced himself to run. He should never have come to see the hanging. Should’ve cut loose the moment the law had grabbed his daddy, kept on running, left him all the way behind and never looked back. But he had to know it was really over. Had to see them put the man in the ground, deep down, where he couldn’t hurt nobody ever again.

“You knew him,” the man decided quietly, glancing over at the body in the barrow. It wasn’t a question.

The boy forced himself not to look, too. “No, Sir,” he managed.

“No? Well…” The stranger gave a lazy kind of sigh, “_I did_.”

And Arthur found himself fixed in place with fear, not sure if he were about to piss his pants or pass out right there in the street. It was all he could do to try to keep breathing, short and fast, in and out, like a coney twitching in the grass, hoping it might turn invisible if it stayed still enough.

The man leaned forward over the pommel with a creak of leather, pointing over Arthur’s shoulder. “That there dear departed soul was one Lyle Morgan,” he said, pretending not to notice when the boy flinched at the name, “Knew him a long time back. Going on a decade, in fact. Had himself a pretty wife. A little infant child. Was savin’ up for a patch of land…” 

A brief, sorrowful expression passed over the man’s face. Deepened when he looked back down at the boy. “Seems like he got himself in a whole heap of trouble since then, huh?”

The boy still couldn’t move. He kept his eyes on the ground, on the horse’s shuffling hooves. He knew when to stay quiet. When to listen. Some men just enjoyed the sound of their own voice. His daddy had been that way, too, except mostly he liked to shout. This one didn’t need to – he commanded attention like a preacher, with a deep, smooth baritone that you felt in your chest more than heard it.

“Always was a hot-headed bastard,” the man continued, “A little too heavy on the drink. Little too short on temper. Quick to use his fists...” His eyes flicked over the boy once more – a cool, disapproving appraisal – his voice slow and careful. “Some say that’s how he lost his wife. Or maybe it was a fever. I don’t rightly recall now.”

Arthur bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood.

The horseman gave another sigh. “Either way, a loss like that? Well, it’ll change a man. Turn him cold, if he’s not careful. Make him _weak_.”

He practically spat the last word, which made the gentleness of what he said next all the more startling: “You know, it takes strength to stay upright when this world beats you down, son. To keep looking for beauty when all you’re shown is dirt.”

A heavy silence followed, as if the man was waiting for an answer. The words were so pretty but they somehow _hurt_, too.

“Yessir,” the boy whispered. His heartbeat flapped in his chest like a fish out of water.

“You know what they got him for?” the man asked, all conversational-like, as if he hadn’t just told the boy the story of his own life.

“Nossir,” he lied.

“_Grand larceny_,” the stranger proclaimed with a scathing laugh, “As if that son-of-a-bitch was ever anything more than a petty thief. Heard he got so drunk after hitting the Baxter payroll the posse could hear him singing _The Streets of Laredo_ from a mile away.”

Arthur swallowed the lump in his throat. He couldn’t tell what kind of man this was, jumping between cruelty and kindness from one word to another. Didn’t know what the joke was – if there was a joke – or if maybe _Arthur _was the joke.

The man’s voice dropped conspiratorially, “But you know… They’re saying he must’ve had an accomplice…”

At this, the boy’s head snapped up, eyes wide with panic. And that must have been the punchline, because the stranger smiled wide, with his teeth, and Arthur tried to bolt, only to discover a firm hand holding onto a fistful of his collar, locking him in place. He knew struggling would only get him into deeper trouble, catch too many other eyes, so he fought the instinct to fight. Went stark stiff in the man’s grip, his face almost pressed into the flank of the mare, breathing in its musty scent, and the stranger leant right down to talk soft in the boy’s ear, nice and easy, the way you’d calm a spooked horse.

“Now then, son, no need to go makin’ a spectacle of ourselves. Why don’t you climb on up here and we’ll have ourselves a little talk someplace a little less… public?”

The boy had no choice in the matter. The man hauled him up in front of the saddle, caging him in with his arms, and nudged the mare forward faster than Arthur could gather his balance.

* * *

Outside of town, the hills looked down over the cluster of buildings; the scaffold at the far end of main street, empty now; the winding path that led to a little shack-church with its yard peppered with crosses. Even from here, the boy could see the freshly-dug grave, waiting like an open mouth for his father’s corpse.

The stranger stopped to let his horse graze for a moment, far enough away that the figures in the town looked like tiny tin soldiers. No chance of prying eyes or ears out here. No one to witness if he chose to let out that wolf behind his smile. But the man’s voice stayed soft and calm – almost apologetic. “I know you wanted to say goodbye. But it’s best you stay clear of there for a while…”

The stranger put a finger to the boy’s chin and lifted it an inch. “All them colourful bruises on your face… Well, they might raise a few questions if you stick around. You understand me?”

The boy nodded dumbly.

“Good boy. I could tell you was a smart one the moment I saw you,” the stranger said, and even though Arthur thought he might be poking fun at him, a blush warmed his chest.

With a tug of the reins, the man set his horse back on the track away from town and they fell into a comfortable trot.

“Now then, son,” the man said, in that same smooth voice that made compliance so easy, “Why don’t you tell me what you remember about the night your pappy stole the Baxter payroll?”

* * *

_He remembered the afterwards. Remembered his daddy singing too loud, all buoyed up with his own self-importance, and the sound echoing all around. Remembered crouching by a pitiful fire in a copse up near the railroad, wood smoke in his eyes, wishing they’d bought a little food instead of moonshine. Wishing he’d thought to check the tobacco pouch before his daddy found it empty and got his blood all fired up. _

_Wishing he’d seen the torches on the road sooner. _

_By the time he noticed it was already too late. His father was deep in his cups – too far gone to get on the horse, but not so far gone he couldn’t lash out with an open fist when the boy tried to pull on his arm. He knocked the child down for the second time that evening and roared out another verse. Never even saw the posse crest the hill behind him until there was a rifle barrel pressed into the back of his neck. _

_And the boy had run. Like hell. Like the coward his father told him he was. Slipped into the darkness beyond the trees and run blind with tears and terror, ears ringing with snatches of a song that turned into a yell so furious, so full of betrayal, that he expected the earth to crack and swallow him up for his sins…_

* * *

But that wasn’t what the stranger wanted to know.

And Arthur wasn’t stupid enough to think the man was acting purely out of kindness, no matter how sweetly he spoke.

The stranger wanted to know if there was any money left; anything that hadn’t been collected by the posse; some secret stash hidden somewhere – in the hollow of an old tree, under a fence post, inside a chimney. But there was never anything left. The boy’s father was not a man who knew how to save for a rainy day. For Lyle Morgan, it was always raining, even when the sun shone, and better to spend it while you have it. Better to drink tonight than worry about tomorrow.

The boy didn’t know what the horseman would do when he found out there was no profit to be had. He felt like a ragdoll in the saddle, his bones rattling inside him as they rode on.

But the stranger didn’t seem to be bothered by his silence. He fed the boy simple questions, gently nudging the facts out of him, piece by piece.

“Just the two of you, then?”

The boy nodded.

“Held ‘em up at the bridge, that right?”

Another nod.

“They see you? Or just your pop?”

A shake of his head. He’d been waiting in the woods with the horse, a grimy old cattleman revolver in his hands, wishing and praying to a god he already knew didn’t exist that it would be his daddy come crashing through the undergrowth and not the payroll guards. He’d only ever shot at birds before, and mostly missed them.

“Well, that’s something,” the man sighed. He sounded impatient. The boy cringed smaller in the saddle.

“And the posse caught up before you could hide the money?” One last hopeful interrogation.

The boy nodded miserably. There was a long silence, punctuated by the muted thudding of the horse’s hooves on the dirt road.

“Shame,” the man said at last, and he didn’t sound bitter, or angry – just regretful. “Haul like that – could’ve been a fresh start.”

The boy didn’t know what that meant. Or where they were going or why he was on the man’s horse. How far he might get if he tried to run. How quick the stranger could draw that ornate pistol on his hip. If he’d be joining his daddy in the ground before the day was out.

He jolted as the man lay a warm hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. About your father. Sorry for what he did to you.”

And Arthur didn’t know which part brought on the lump in his throat. Or why he couldn’t stop tears from burning his eyes. Why he cared at all about a father who had clearly cared so little about his own son. Why this stranger had shown him more compassion than anyone he could remember since his mother.

He realised he didn’t even know the man’s name. Tried to ask, but his voice was stuck, and the stranger took it for a sob, squeezed his shoulder and made it all worse with that calming tone of his. “Easy now. You’ll be alright.”

The boy let the tears dry on his face. Too ashamed to brush them away. Too exhausted to do much else but lean into the stranger’s hand as they rode on. He threaded his own fingers into the horse’s mane, teasing out the tangles and burrs, smoothing it down over the mare’s fine neck. It was a peaceful silence, and for a moment he let himself believe the man’s words. For a moment he wished they could just keep on riding – right on into the horizon, off the edge of the land – and the world might never catch up.

But it was only a moment. And moments pass. And the world is always at your back.

The boy hadn’t been paying any attention to where they were headed and he flinched when the squeal of a steam engine split the air. The railroad stretched out before them like a ladder as the stranger steered the horse towards a squat shack of a station at the bottom of the valley.

It was an empty shell of a place – a nowhere place, halfway between here and there – a place for the train to fill up on water and coal and a few scattered passengers. Smoke in the distance and another piercing shriek of steam announced an incoming locomotive.

A man waited by the hitching post, watching them approach – sandy-haired and serious-looking. His eyebrows raised in query when he saw the boy.

“You took your time, Dutch” he said in a dry voice, like cracking twigs. “What on earth you got there?”

The horseman – Dutch, he called him, though he didn’t look or sound like a foreigner – swung himself off the horse and gestured for the boy to follow. Arthur slid down after him, reluctant to leave the warmth of the animal’s back. He ran a hand down the mare’s nose and she gave him an appreciative nudge.

“Lyle’s boy,” Dutch said, in an emphatic undertone that made the other man’s eyes flit over the kid uncertainly.

“They got him then?”

A meaningful nod from Dutch, who was busying himself digging in the other man’s saddlebags.

“And what happened to you?” the other man asked the boy, wincing a little as he took in the marks of violence, the red-rimmed eyes, the sullen lip.

Arthur still couldn’t find his voice. It was buried somewhere in his chest now, and it ached there.

The man called Dutch saved him from answering, pressed a parcel of bread and cheese into his hands and sat him down on the station deck.

“Now you just set there for a spell. Get some food in you, alright, boy?”

The boy ate mechanically at first, then with increasing urgency, in case it might be taken away from him at any moment. The sandy-haired man was still staring at him, and continued to do so, even when Dutch grabbed him by the arm and pulled him a ways away to mutter in low tones they thought the boy couldn’t hear.

“Hosea, listen-”

The other man shook his head wearily. “Don’t have time for this, Dutch. Morgan might’ve distracted them for a while but they’re still on our trail.”

“They’d’ve taken him too, if I’d left him there.”

“Looks like a simpleton to me. Does he speak?”

“He’s had a shock. A hard life.”

“Well, ain’t we all?”

The man named Hosea gave a sigh but his eyes turned a touch softer as he looked back at the boy. “What’s your name, son?” he asked.

The boy swallowed a chunk of bread and it seemed to clear the lump in his throat enough for him to reply, albeit hesitantly: “Arthur?” as if he wasn’t sure himself.

Hosea nodded. “You got any other family, Arthur? Someplace to go?”

The boy shrugged, shrinking into his shoulders. His mother was years in the ground, his only memory of her locked away in a photograph he kept in his satchel. It’d been just him and his daddy for a long while, and even then they’d never had a place of their own – always moving on, always running. And now there was no one and nothing. The enormity of it was too much to comprehend. The boy’s hands tightened around the parcel of food, as if it was all he had left to cling to.

Dutch stepped past the other man and dropped down to one knee to put himself on eye level with the kid. “Your daddy ever run with anyone? A group?”

There had been times Arthur’s father had worked with other outlaws – not quite a gang, more a handful of desperate men who happened to find themselves together – but they were one-off jobs. No one wanted a child dragging behind them, slowing them down. Not even his daddy, it seemed. He shook his head.

Dutch straightened up and turned back to Hosea, palms spread wide in a gesture of helplessness.

Hosea rolled his eyes to the heavens. “We’re not a charity, Dutch,” he said, not even trying to keep his voice low now. “Can’t be hauling a kid around. We need to get the hell out of this damn state. And it’s certainly not fair to drag him right back into a life he just got free of…”

The boy stared at his feet. The sound of the approaching train was building into a thunder. He could feel it through the ground, smell the choking smog in the air. He let the bread and cheese drop into the dirt. They could beat him for it, he didn’t care. They meant to leave him here, anyway.

The two men were muttering together now, most of what they were saying lost under the unholy noise of the engine powering into the station. The one called Dutch looked frustrated. Angry, even. The one called Hosea was calm as a lake but kept one eye on the road, one eye on the boy, like he expected trouble at any minute.

The train rolled in and hissed itself to a stop, cutting off any further discussion, but it seemed something had been decided as Dutch pulled the boy to his feet and began piling things into his arms – a blanket, a waterskin, a couple of tins that’d lost their labels, a pouch of coins. Hosea added the stub of a train ticket to the pile and retrieved the food the boy had dropped, dusting it off carefully and wrapping it back up again without a word.

Dutch took the boy by the shoulders, fixing him to the earth with a stern look. “Now, you listen to me, Arthur. Here’s what you’re gonna do. Three stops down the line, you’ll find a little town called Westbury,” he said, pointing along the train track. “There’s a saloon there. A… ‘house of pleasure’. You know what that is?”

The boy blinked back at him. He’d always been made to sit outside whenever his daddy visited a place like that, but he got the general gist. He nodded. Saw Hosea hide a smirk.

“Ask for Grimshaw,” Dutch continued, “She’ll give you a hot meal. A bath. Somewhere to sleep. Tell her Dutch sent you and she’s to take care of you ‘til you get back on your feet.”

The boy looked from one face to the other. At the stack of gifts in his arms. He didn’t want to start crying again. He wanted to scream himself hoarse. Wanted to drop it all to the ground, stamp it into the dust and beg for them to take him with them. But he was too slow and too dumb and it was too late to say all the things that were bubbling up into his throat.

“You’ll be alright, son,” Dutch said, as he herded him up onto the nearest carriage, but it sounded as if the man was trying to convince himself as much as the boy, “You just need to have a little faith.”

The words rang in the boy’s head like a bell. _How? And f__aith in what?_ he wanted to ask. _Faith in who? _

And he’d never needed an answer to a question so bad in his life. Never would stop seeking it from this moment on.

He tried to grip hold of Dutch’s sleeve as the man made to turn away, but the train whistle sliced through the air once more and the boy let go, startled.

A smile crossed the stranger’s face and he touched a finger to his hat. “Safe travels, Arthur Morgan." 

The great monstrous machine beneath the boy’s feet juddered forward, and it was all he could do to clutch onto his ticket with cold fingers and watch as the landscape shifted sideways and the two figures shrank into nothingness.

And he realised he hadn't even thanked the man. Realised he didn't even know the name of the town his daddy was buried in. Realised then that no good would ever come from looking backward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. This is brand new and hopefully going to be a longer series made up of (mostly canon) backstory, a few favourite in-game moments, and some expansions here and there. No doubt John will be along soon, too... 
> 
> Requests for certain scenes or any elements of backstory you'd like me to explore are absolutely welcome. Kudos and comments always appreciated. Hope you enjoy.
> 
> And if you're feeling really generous, my Ko-Fi is here: https://ko-fi.com/ignorantarmies x


	2. Chapter 2

Later – years later – Arthur would understand why Dutch put him on that train. Why he looked into the eyes of a lost boy who needed to be found and sent him out into the wilderness. Later, he’d know how to measure one danger against another. But his eleven-year-old self couldn’t tell the difference.

Still. He did as he was told. Didn’t have many other options. He counted three stops, biting the insides of his cheeks to stop the stinging of his eyes from overspilling once more, and watched the horizon roll by through blurry vision.

He hadn’t thought about what he’d do next. Hadn’t thought of anything much beyond the hanging. As if everything ended right there. He reckoned his father must be in the ground by now, and that was a small comfort, even though he wished he’d stayed to see it - he would dream of that corpse digging itself out and coming to claim him for years...

It was getting dark by the time the train pulled in at Westbury, another nothing town in an expanse of red dusty earth, shutting itself down for the evening. But the lamplight at the end of main street drew him forward – you could always rely on a saloon to light the way - but the closer he got, the more his nerves gnawed at him.

He wasn’t stupid enough to go in the front. He carried his bundle of second-hand belongings up to the back step and stood there for a moment, listening to the sounds of drunken men and laughing women inside. His heart was pattering again. What if Grimshaw wasn’t there? What if there was no Grimshaw at all? What if Dutch had made up the name to get rid of him? Or what if she _was_ real but turned him away? He didn’t know if he had it in him to find out. 

He took a step backwards, looked out beyond the packed dirt yard behind the saloon to the tree line beyond. Westbury was bordered by a hilly forest on one side and a deep canyon gorge on the other. Plenty of places for a boy to find a place to hide. He had a blanket and a little food and water. He’d never owned much more than that in his life, anyways. And slept in far worse places than the woods. He was pretty sure he still had a knife and a couple dry matches in his satchel, too, and that’s really all a person needed to survive, wasn't it?

He took another step away from the saloon. Glared at the rising, mocking moon. He didn’t need no whorehouse charity. Didn’t need no Dutch or Hosea or dead father to take care of him. Didn’t need no Grimshaw, whatever she was. Grimshaw sounded like the name of some witch from a campfire story; some gnarled old lady who wanted to boil you up for soup. And he didn't need any more nightmares in his life.

He almost made it to the back fence before he paused. The dark grasslands spread out before him like an ocean. The screech of coyotes echoed down the hills like a jeer.

Maybe he _was_ being a little hasty. He’d feel safer with a lantern, at least. And two tins of food and a bit of cheese wasn't gonna last him long - he couldn't very well hunt without a gun or a bow. And one blanket wasn’t going to be enough to keep out the chill once the temperature dropped. And the night really was coming on now – a crisp one at that – and the trees looked a good hour’s walk away, through wet grass that would soak his feet within a few steps. And the darkness seemed much deeper than it ought to be, all of a sudden, and–

“Jesus H. Christ, what you doin’, sneakin’ around out here?”

The boy whirled at the voice. A bearded man in grubby overalls stood silhouetted in the doorway. He held a bucket of food scraps in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and peered down at Arthur with a suspicious grimace.

“What you want, boy?”

The smell of cooking and tobacco and sawdust and sweat came flooding out of the open door, along with a wash of warm yellow light. The woods seemed an awful long way away now, and Arthur found himself edging towards the back step once more.

He swallowed his pride. Might as well ask, at least. “Grimshaw?” he said, praying it wasn’t all a joke, that he hadn’t somehow imagined the whole thing.

The man stared a moment longer, rolled his eyes, and flicked his cigarette in a high sparking arc over Arthur’s head.

“Here,” he grunted, thrusting the bucket of slop into the boy’s arms, forcing him to drop everything else. “Go throw this to the pigs. I’ll see if she’s… indisposed.”

Arthur hugged the bucket to his chest, nodding fiercely, as the man headed back inside yelling, “Susan!” at the top of his lungs.

The door swung shut behind him and the night turned blue and cold once more. Arthur blinked into the dark, looking around for any sign of livestock in the yard, and eventually followed his nose around the side of the building to a sty full of snoring piglets, all snuggled up against a gigantic sow.

He deposited the contents of the bucket in their pen and stood for a minute, watching the animals bustle for a place at the trough, thinking Grimshaw would make a good name for the huge, lumbering mama hog. Maybe the real Grimshaw was just like her, all ruddy and round and grouchy – the saloon cook, perhaps. Or maybe she was the opposite, some skinny old hag holding court over all the saloon girls, all pinched and mean… Either way, what on earth would she make of a filthy orphan at her door? She would surely send him away, soon as look at him.

He let the bucket drop at his feet. Whatever Dutch had said, this was a wholly foolish idea. Even climbing into the pigsty for the night looked a better option than have another person stare at him like he was shit on their shoe – or have them laugh in his face for thinking he might be owed some common kindness.

He would brave the woods. He couldn’t let himself be afraid no more. He had to be a man, now that he was all alone. And a man didn’t go begging at back doors.

Except… he’d left all his things back there, around the corner. All Dutch’s things. And although his pride was ready to send him running off into the dark in nothing but his shirtsleeves, he wasn’t so much of an idiot that he’d leave behind the means to survive the night. So back he crept, hoping the bearded man had given up trying to find this Grimshaw, or that she’d already looked out and found the yard empty. But he’d barely poked his head around the corner before a scathing voice froze him in place.

“Huh. Charlie said there was a stray out here.”

A woman stood leaning against the door frame, one arm crossed over her belly, the other elbow perched on top, a thin cheroot pinched between her fingers. She wasn’t a wicked witch, or a fat cook, or an old hag – she was a fine-figured woman not much older than Dutch, in a fine-tailored dress, with a fine mane of hair carefully piled into what looked like a bushel atop her head. She jerked her chin at him.

“Come on over here.”

She had the kind of voice you didn’t think twice about obeying – not harsh, as such, just… non-negotiable. And the boy did as she said, coming just close enough to scoop up his belongings, sticking to the shadows outside the reach of the light from the doorway.

She tilted her head like a curious bird. “How’d you know my name?”

Now that he was nearer, he could see that her face seemed a little kinder than her tone, and the boy found his tongue with only a slight stutter. “Dutch. Dutch sent me.”

She allowed only a brief expression of surprise cross her face before settling her features back into a mask of neutrality. “Why would he do that?”

Arthur hesitated. She didn’t seem all that happy to hear Dutch’s name. In fact, she seemed to be tamping down some kind of fury beneath the thin line of her lips.

“He send you with a message?” she prompted, impatient with his silence.

He shook his head and his voice shrank even smaller. “Just me.”

Her mouth twisted into a wry smile that had very little humour in it. “A gift from Dutch. How _thoughtful_ that man is. And what, exactly, am I supposed to do with you?”

_A hot meal. A bath. Somewhere to sleep. She’s to take care of you until you get back on your feet. _

It sounded mighty presumptuous, all of a sudden. The hurried promise of an outlaw, plucked out of thin air.

He fumbled for a way to say it without setting a touch paper to that sarcastic tone of hers. “Dutch said–”

“Dutch says a lot of shit,” she snapped, taking a sharp drag of her cigar, “You can’t trust a word that comes out of that man’s mouth.”

The boy’s face fell. It had all been a lie, then.

He backed away once more with a whispered: “Never mind. Sorry, Miss,” but her anger fizzled out as quickly as it had flared and she gave a grating sigh, dropping her arms to her sides.

“Well, you’re here now. Spit it out.”

He mustered up a deep breath and forced himself to look her in the eye. “Dutch said… Said you’d help me.”

She paused then. Considered him properly. Beckoned him closer, into the light, and frowned deep when she saw the marks on his face. “He do this to you? If he did, I’ll–”

“No,” Arthur cut in quickly, darting back, “Not him.” 

“Then who?” she demanded, grabbing hold of his arm, fast as a snake, “And don’t try to tell me you fell on your damn face. Seen my share of bruises.”

He flinched at the sudden contact. “Don’t matter!” he shrieked, shaking her off and tripping backwards onto his ass in the mud. “One who did it’s dead now anyways,” he added quietly. “So it don’t matter.” 

A heavy quietness fell, and her eyes betrayed her – there was a sadness there that didn’t quite match her stern expression.

“Well. Seems like you’ve had a time of it,” she said, setting her hands on her hips, “I s’pose you’ll be hungry.”

He nodded slowly – it seemed to be the answer she was expecting but he didn’t want to get it wrong again. He dug in his pocket for the money pouch Dutch had given him to make sure, “I can pay.”

“Oh, put that away,” she tutted, and hauled him to his feet. “Dutch can owe me, next time he comes around.”

Arthur was about to say that it was Dutch’s money anyways, but she was already bustling him up the back steps and into the saloon kitchen.

The man who’d sent him to feed the pigs was busy at the stove, stirring a pot of stew that smelled better than anything the boy had eaten in weeks. He looked over his shoulder at them but didn’t comment – Grimshaw’s glare was enough to quell any questions – just passed the boy a bowl and a hunk of bread and nodded to a stool in the corner.

The stew was thick and hearty, the bread was fresh, and the boy finished the lot in the space of minutes, washed down with a glass of watery beer. The woman watched him with mild amusement as he licked the bowl clean.

“Well,” she said, “I guess we’ll figure out what to do with you in the mornin’.” Her steely eye looked him over with distaste, “But you ain’t comin’ in like that. Stink like the back end of a hog. Get up those back stairs, we’ll see if there’s any water left.”

Arthur caught the bearded cook shooting Grimshaw an uncertain look and the boy shuffled nervously on his stool, not entirely thrilled about the prospect of a wash, and getting the distinct feeling he wasn’t even allowed to be here in the first place.

“Jackson’s not gonna like this,” the cook muttered, but she shushed him with a flap of her hand.

“Jackson’s not gonna know about it.” Then, to Arthur, “What are you waiting for? Git.”

The boy jumped to attention, half expecting her to take him by the ear, and headed to the stairs at the back of the room before she could try. She followed after, pausing to jab a finger at the cook with a look like thunder. “Charlie, if you breathe a word, I swear–”

But the man was no fool. “I ain’t seen nothing or no one...” he drawled, turning back to his stew with a shrug. 

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s right, you ain’t.” And Arthur wondered if anyone had ever won an argument against the woman.

He certainly wasn’t going to test the theory, and let her gesture him up the stairs, onto a red-wallpapered landing, along a corridor alive with the sounds of amorous couples, and into a perfumed bathroom with a claw-foot tub and a glowing fire.

The boy hung back against the wall while she fussed over a pile of soggy towels left on the floor and tested the water temperature. “Already had a couple of bodies in it, but warm enough,” she concluded, turning her eye on him with an expectant look.

He didn’t move. Surely she didn’t expect him to get in there right now? He’d already washed his face once that week and, well, this was a place for… for… _women_. Naked women, by the looks of the pictures on the wall.

“Well, let’s get ‘em off,” she said, nodding at his filthy shirt and breeches.

Arthur balked. Stammered something even he couldn’t understand. But she was already rolling up her sleeves with a dreadful inevitability. “Jesus, boy, ain’t nothing I haven’t seen before. And I’m not risking you bringin’ lice in here. Now gimme those clothes, get in the tub, and scrub.”

There was no escape.

She stood there, face set like a mountain, arms outstretched to receive his grime-engrained clothing as he stripped down to his smalls, desperately avoiding her eye. He paused then, and waited, shivering, until she finally afforded him a little privacy and turned her back until she heard the splosh of him climbing into the water.

He hoped that might be the end of it – that she’d leave him to it and go and boil his clothes – but she didn’t seem to trust his ability to use a sponge and took matters into her own hands while he sat there in a huddle, knees up to his chest, miserable and humiliated and wincing as she attacked his matted hair with the soap.

“Goddamn Dutch…” she grumbled under her breath, “Some girls get flowers and jewels. I get a street rat covered in fleas.”

He decided it was better to just sit and take it, let her work out her frustrations with a scrubbing brush and an endless stream of complaints and grudges – about Jackson, the saloon owner, who takes too much commission and treats his staff like dirt; about the other girls, all of ‘em lazy or stupid or both; about Charlie, who always overcooks the morning eggs and underbakes the biscuits; about the whole damn town of Westbury, far too sleepy and dull and backward for her tastes; about _goddamn _Dutch, high-tailing off and leaving her here; about how she’s getting out of this place one day - with or without him - going to the city, gonna show ‘em all...

“Where’s he headed to, anyway?” she asked the boy, who had to take a second to realise she was talking to him and not herself.

He blinked the suds out of his eyes. “Who?”

“_Dutch_,” she said, as if it was obvious.

“Said they had to get out of state,” he shrugged.

She humphed. Tore a tangle of hair out at the roots like it was his fault. Worked her fingers into his scalp like she was trying to dig more information out of his brain. He tried not to flinch, and waited until a pause in her ministrations to ask a halting question.

“You think… he’s coming back?”

She let out a long breath and sat back on her heels. “Not if he has any sense. Which I don’t think he has.”

Arthur didn’t know if that meant yes or no, but was too afraid to ask which.

“Just leavin’ me to clear up his messes, as usual…” Grimshaw muttered, _finally_ finished with his hair, and unceremoniously upended a jug of water over his head.

She eased off a little when it came to his bruised eye and split lip, and stopped altogether when she removed the top layer of dirt from his back and saw the faded cross-hatched lash marks that lay beneath, drawing in a hissing breath.

These ones were older than the bruises on his face and ribs, but he still felt a wave of shame wash over him as she pressed a finger into the ridge of scar tissue on his left shoulder – the ghostly reminder of a saddle-strap buckle that had split the skin deep and left him howling.

She didn’t comment, and neither did he, and the room fell to quietness aside from the dull sloshing of the water and the crackle of the fire. She worked gentle circles with the sponge and he watched the bathwater turn grey as his skin pinked and pruned.

“I had a husband once,” she said, out of nowhere, in a voice much softer than he’d heard so far. “Used to get in _such _a temper. Liked to use his belt for a thrashing. But he only used the metal end once...”

Her scrubbing slowed to a stop and she rested her arms on the edge of the tub, fingers trailing in the water, staring sightlessly down into the murk.

“What happened to him?” the boy whispered, a shiver passing over his skin, despite the warmth of the room.

Her eyes snapped up to his, and for a moment she looked much older than her years.

“A shotgun happened to him,” she said flatly.

He didn’t look away, and an infinitesimal nod of understanding passed between them.

She took his chin in her hand and turned his face to the firelight. “You said he was dead – the one who did this to you.”

He nodded as much as he was able within her iron grip. 

“Good.” Her eyes narrowed again. “Dutch kill him?”

“No.”

One eyebrow arched upward. “You?”

He began to answer with another ‘no’ but it got stuck in his throat. Maybe he _had_ killed him, in a way. It’s what his daddy surely died believing. It’s what his nightmares would tell him, night after night, for months. Years. And even though he didn’t believe in heaven he was still afraid there might be a hell, and that one day he’d meet his father there.

He squeezed his eyes shut at the thought, chest heaving in a panic, hands clawing at the sides of the tub as he had a sudden vision of being sucked down under the water, down into the earth, into the fire. Water sluiced across the floor as he tried to climb out, and he slipped, landing heavily on his side, still scrabbling like a fallen deer, barely even seeing the room around him. But then he felt the calm, cool pressure of a palm against his cheek; a towel settling across his shoulders; her arms wrapping around him, like she had no intention of letting him go. And it was as if all his strength just melted out of him. He let her pull his head into her shoulder, let it rest there, even though his wet hair was soaking through her shirt.

She didn’t tell him it would all be alright. She didn’t hush him or rock him or sing to him, or do much else but hold him; let him cry; let him talk when he was ready. About his daddy. About running. About the rope. The grave. Everything.

They sat like that until the fire turned to embers in the hearth. He was yawning every other word by the end of it – the weight of the past few days finally coming to rest – and somewhere between blinks he found himself curled up in a bed wearing a clean nightshirt, the muted sounds of a piano seeping up through the floorboards. And just before his dreams pulled him under - before he slipped into the heaviness of exhausted sleep - a passing thought made the ghost of a smile cross his lips. And later - much later - when he was grown and only a little afraid of her still, he would tell her what he'd reckoned that night: that Grimshaw was a name far better suited to a warrior than a witch.


	3. Chapter 3

He woke to shouting and the slamming of doors, jolting into consciousness with no idea whose bed he was in or why or even where. He tangled himself in the bedsheets trying to escape the remnants of heavy, ominous dreams he couldn’t quite remember, and landed on the bare floorboards with a jarring thud.

Reality hit him just as solidly. A cold, hollow feeling burrowed into his chest as the events of the previous day tumbled down like heavy stone dominos. The shock and adrenaline of it all had worn off into a kind of dull daze. He huddled into a tight ball of bedclothes and blinked the room into focus, flinching at the sound of raised voices downstairs. He recognised Miss Grimshaw’s warning tones, almost daring someone to cross her – yelling something about ‘morning clothes’, whatever that meant. Something about a wagon. Something else he couldn’t catch but was pretty sure it ended in a cuss. 

He wasn’t used to sleeping indoors – certainly not in a bed all his own – and the closeness of the room suddenly felt like a prison cell. The only way out was through the door – in the direction of the increasingly high-pitched shouts – or through the second storey window. Neither was an attractive option, so he found himself scooting backwards until he was under the bed as the voices grew nearer, up the stairs now, in the corridor right outside his door.

“Goddamnit, if that bonnet isn’t in my hands within the next minute I’m gonna start tanning hides…”

The door was shoved open and Grimshaw appeared, clothed all in black, hair pinned up tight, looking like a thunderstorm. Arthur caught a glimpse of a couple of half-dressed figures dashing past the doorway, clearly eager to be out of the warpath. He didn’t understand what she was so angry about but he curled tighter, willing himself invisible, assuming without any shred of doubt that whatever it was, it must be his fault and he would soon be paying for it.

She paused for a moment, temporarily confused by the seemingly empty room, before giving a heavy sigh and bending down to peer under the bed. The tiniest of smiles curved her lip but she did her best to quell it with a scowl.

“Mr Morgan, are you a chamber pot?” she asked mildly.

He stared back at her, open mouthed, and dumbly shook his head.

“Then you’ve got no business being under the bed. C’mon now, get out from there.”

When he didn’t move immediately, she tilted her head ever so slightly and he quickly came to realise that a person did what Miss Grimshaw told them to without question.

He scrambled out and they stood there for a moment, considering one another – him barefoot in a borrowed nightshirt and her… all trussed up for a funeral it looked like. He was about to ask why when one of the girls came hurrying in carrying a black, lace-trimmed bonnet which she passed to Miss Grimshaw with a kind of guilty reverence.

Grimshaw snatched it out of her hands and shot the girl a deadly glare, “Just turned up, did it? Funny how that happens…”

The girl attempted a sheepish smile but fast decided it was better to just get the hell out of there and scurried back out the door. Arthur had half a mind to follow after her but Miss Grimshaw was already turning her attention on him, fussing over his bedhead with a disapproving purse of her lips.

“You’d better get yourself dressed,” she said, turning to the mirror in the corner and carefully pinning the bonnet into her hair. “I’ve got some business to take care of but I’ll be back this afternoon. Charlie’ll give you some work to do in the meantime. Just don’t let Jackson see you.”

He opened his mouth in an attempt to ask one of the thousand questions he had cluttering up his head, but she turned and fixed him with a sharply pointed finger to the chest. “And don’t go nowhere, y’hear me? At least ‘til we’ve figured out what we’re gonna do with you.”

He nodded again. He didn’t know where he would possibly go, even if he had the balls to defy her. There was nowhere and no one on this earth that wanted him.

She countered his despondency with a tut of her tongue and pressed a stack of freshly-laundered clothes into his hands. They were his own, but unrecognisable – clean and mended and smelling of sharp lye soap.

“I’ll be back later,” she said, more gently this time, making a few final adjustments to her bonnet. “Just mind yourself ‘til then, all right?”

He got the feeling that she wasn’t going to leave without an answer, so he mumbled a: “Yes, Ma’am,” and she gave him one final nod before sweeping out the door, looking more like a grand duchess than a whorehouse Madame.

The rest of the house seemed to be just waking up, even though it must have been late morning, and the sounds of cooking and chatter drifted up from downstairs. In the warm haze of the evening before, the bedroom had seemed warm and safe, but now it just felt like one more place he didn’t belong, stinking of other people’s sweat and stale beer. He considered the window again but it was far too high to jump, and as much as his every instinct was telling him to flee – to rabbit up into the woods like he’d planned – he was firmly under Grimshaw’s spell and knew he had to do as she said.

He dressed quickly, more to keep out the chill than anything, and found his clothes felt strange without their usual grime – the well-worn softness replaced by stiff, rough fabric that scratched at the back of his neck and underarms. He pouted at the sour-faced boy in the mirror; winced at the sickly brown and yellow bruising around his eye; picked at the scab on his lip and set it to bleeding again. He licked it clean, felt his belly rumble at the cheap trick, and figured if nothing else he should see if he could scavenge up another plate from the kitchen.

Downstairs, the smell of coffee warmed the air, bolstered by grits and bacon, and the boy let his stomach take the lead, sending him creeping into the kitchen where the cook maintained his position at the stove, as if he’d never left it. Arthur was loitering at the bottom of the stairs, summoning up the gumption to pull at the man’s sleeve to get his attention, when a crowd of saloon girls in various states of undress suddenly appeared at the common room doorway, staring and giggling at him like he was some kind of circus animal.

“Here he is, Grimshaw’s pet!”

“Oh, just look at him. Wanna come sit with us, sweetie?”

“Charlie, get him something to eat. Poor thing’s rag ‘n’ bone.”

Arthur froze, eyes wide, face reddening as the girls whispered something between them and dissolved into laughter. Charlie let out a tired sigh and swept the boy behind him with one thick arm, not even pausing in his rhythmic stirring of the pot.

“Ah, leave him alone, won’t ya?” the cook grumbled, perhaps prompted by some sort of male solidarity, what with the pair of them being so severely outnumbered by the women. He piled up a breakfast plate for the boy and sent him to sit on the stoop out back as the girls carried on their teasing from a distance, peppering Charlie with questions about the new arrival that he answered with a series of non-committal shrugs.

Arthur pretended he couldn’t hear them. All the attention made his ears hot and the back of his neck prickle, and he put all his focus into his food in an attempt to try to block out the bickering of the adults behind him. It was an easy distraction – he’d eaten more by the charity of strangers the past few days than his father had fed him in a week. And if there was one useful thing his daddy had taught him, it was to never pass up the opportunity for a free meal. Because you never knew when you’d be on the run again.

That habitual restlessness was ingrained in him, it seemed. An uncertainty that made settling a struggle. Every time the girls laughed a little too sharply, or Charlie brought down his chopping knife a little too loudly, or a door slammed, or a dog barked, or a train whistled, or a goddamn cockerel squawked, the boy would jolt, his spoon clattering against his plate. He didn’t really understand why these people were helping him and feeding him and cleaning his clothes and letting him sleep in a real bed all to himself, and the part of him that had been poisoned by his father’s blood couldn’t help but wonder when it was going to end. Or what they might be expecting in return.

His wondering was answered soon enough. He’d barely finished his food when Charlie came clomping out, still chased by the voices of catcalling women, and whisked the empty plate out of his hands, replacing it with a stiff-bristled brush and a dirty cloth.

“Grimshaw said put you to work,” the man said gruffly, jerking his chin at the pile of pots and bowls stacked in the sink behind him.

Arthur followed his gesture and was relieved to see that the girls were beginning to drift back upstairs, yawning, bored of their little game.

He nodded. Grateful for the simple transaction. Grateful of the chance to prove his usefulness; hoping that maybe, if he did a good job, they’d at least let him stay until the next meal. Grimshaw’d said she’d be back by the afternoon – if he could just stay out of trouble ‘til then…

_Then what? _his father’s voice sneered inside his head. _They’ll take you on as a kitchen boy? A whorehouse mascot? They don’t want you hanging around any more’n I did._

The boy scowled at his own brain for conjuring up the words it knew would torture him. Scowled because he knew it was right. He’d seen it in Miss Grimshaw’s eyes the night before – a weariness he’d mistaken for sympathy. The warning look that’d passed between her and the cook when they’d taken him in. He wasn’t meant to be here. The saloon owner, Jackson, whoever he was, wasn’t meant to know he even existed. Arthur didn’t know what kind of man this Jackson was, or what might happen if he discovered a random orphan in his kitchen, but he could see Charlie keeping one uneasy eye on the common room as they cooked and scrubbed, side by side.

He wished Grimshaw were here. Charlie seemed to be begrudgingly tolerant of the boy, but Arthur doubted the cook would stand up for him if his job was on the line.

“Where’d she go?” the boy asked, breaking the silence and eliciting another grunt from the cook. “Miss Grimshaw, I mean.”

“Don’t know and don’t wanna know,” Charlie mumbled, with a shrug of his wide shoulders. “She does what she wants. Ain’t no business of mine.”

So that’s how it was. Arthur didn’t pursue it. Tried not to worry. Told himself she’d be back. She wouldn’t have just upped and left. Dutch had promised she’d help. He just hoped he wasn’t getting them all into trouble by sticking around.

* * *

As the morning wore on, they fell into a quiet, companionable sort of rhythm. Arthur was used to this kind of menial work – his father had always made sure he’d earned his keep – and there was something calming about it, distracting him from all the worries buzzing in his skull. Scrub. Rinse. Dry. Repeat. This, at least, he couldn’t screw up.

Once the dishes were done, Charlie sent him out to feed the hogs and showed him how to sweep the ashes out of the big kitchen fireplace before setting him on the stool in the corner with a sack of potatoes and a peeling knife.

Around the same time the cook slipped out into the yard for a smoke, the girls made a grand appearance on the stairs once more – only this time they were made up for the working day after dozing through most of the morning, descending in a cloud of perfume and chatter and petticoats. They filled the kitchen with colour and noise, trapping the boy firmly in the corner, and this time there was no Charlie to save him.

“That lazy son-of-a-bitch makin’ you do all his chores?” one of them said, her peach-pink dress almost the exact same tone as her rouged cheeks.

“Got you working like a dog, poor baby,” said another with a theatrical downturn of her lip, snatching the knife out of his hands and sticking it point-down into the sideboard so it quivered. “How’d you like to earn a nickel?”

Arthur looked desperately out of the window for the cook, but the man was pointedly ignoring the situation, having seemingly reached his limit of responsibility for the boy and unwilling to challenge the she-wolves surrounding him.

“Charlie! We’re borrowing your boy!” the one in the peach-coloured dress hollered, and the rest of them hooted and snorted when the cook’s old familiar grunt came back in reply.

Arthur, apparently, didn’t get a say in any of this. They dragged him off the stool and herded him into the common room where they talked all at once, a mile a minute, tasking him with a list of errands he could barely keep track of – mailing a scented letter to a sweetheart across town; picking up parcels from the post office; retrieving a lost earring from beneath the front step; buying cigarettes and treats from the general store – each of them insisting that their job was more important than the others, promising him pennies and candy and even kisses as a reward.

Arthur eventually extricated himself, trying his best to remember all the different orders and requests as he stumbled out of the saloon, desperately relieved to be out in the open air for a while. His pockets jangled with coins – the girls had given him more than enough to pay for all their errands – and he felt a little dizzy at the prospect of having so much money at his fingertips. A calculating part of him – that Lyle Morgan blood again – said: _There’s far more here than they’re promising to pay you... _Enough for another train ticket and then some. He could be gone before they even realised what had happened. Not that he knew where he might go, or what he’d do when he got there. A handful of small change wasn’t going to get him very far... And another part of him – an unfamiliar part that left an ache in his chest when it caught him thinking like his daddy – said: _Why is your first thought to cross these people when all they’ve shown you is kindness? _

The girls had trusted him with their money. Grimshaw had trusted him to stay put. They didn’t even know him and they’d put more faith in him than his father had ever done.

He pulled his hands out of his pockets like he’d been burned, making fists at his sides. His cheeks flushed hot, as if the word THIEF was emblazoned on his forehead for everyone to see.

His eyes darted about the thoroughfare but no one was paying any attention to a scruffy boy with a frown as deep as a canyon. No one could read his mind and see what was written there: the long list of crimes he’d be committing if his daddy were here right now.

It came all too naturally to him, as if temptation waited on every corner. Unattended saddlebags slung over a hitching post. The pockets of distracted card players in the saloon. Windows open just wide enough for a small boy to slip through… Arthur’s eyes were trained to spot an opportunity; his fingers trained for thievery, for pickpocketing, for sleight of hand; his brain trained to almost crave the rush of risk and fear, for the cold thrill of getting away clean - the only time his father had ever seemed pleased with him.

Lyle’s favourite ruse – and Arthur’s most hated – was a little performance he liked to call ‘the lost lamb’, in which the boy would wander into a store or down the street, weeping and wailing, all forlorn, pretending to be looking for his papa. While the boy accumulated a crowd of kind-hearted souls, his daddy would capitalise on the distraction, cutting purses, picking locks, or emptying cash registers. It was an effective set-up, and Lyle employed it as often as he could, trying to make the most of his son’s temporary misery - “before you get too old and ugly for anyone to care about your whining.”

It was Arthur’s least favourite trick for several reasons. Firstly, to make it more realistic, his father would pinch and slap him to set him off crying, leaving his cheeks red and his upper arms covered in bruises. The boy was no actor but he didn’t have to try hard to seem miserable and lost after such a thorough preparation. Secondly, people seemed to genuinely want to help him – women especially – and their misplaced sympathy made his stomach twist with guilt, as if his conscience lived in his belly, knowing that he didn’t deserve any of their concern.

That old familiar ache sat there in his guts now; it followed him all around the town as he worked through his list of chores, even though he had no intention of double-crossing the saloon girls. He hadn’t had much of what you’d call a religious education but he figured it was what sin must feel like. A weight you never got rid of, no matter how much you tried to balance it out. A blemish you could never quite hide. A stain you couldn’t scrub away. And sooner or later, people were bound to discover it.

* * *

By the time Arthur got back to the saloon it was getting on for mid-afternoon and the bar was already filling up, though there was still no sign of Miss Grimshaw. He made sure to come in the back way, wary of the bustling common room, and the girls met him in the kitchen with a flurry of rustling skirts and delighted exclamations. Charlie made gruff, unimpressed noises at having so many people cluttering up his territory but the girls ignored his grumbling, making a grand fuss over Arthur, ruffling his hair and kissing his cheeks and plying him with liquorice and pennies. He didn’t feel as if he really deserved all the praise – certainly not for some simple fetching and carrying – and for a moment he wondered if they weren’t just making fun of him, but all he could was stand there, blinking dumbly, until they whisked out of the kitchen just as fast as they’d appeared.

Charlie glanced over his shoulder at the boy with a squinting eye and just the barest hint of a smile. “You’ll be after my job next, I expect.”

It took Arthur a moment to realise it was a joke and not a threat, but by then he’d already blurted out a panicked ‘nossir’ that made the cook snort with amusement.

The boy stared at the tiled floor, feeling stupid. The sweets the girls had given him were starting to melt in his hot hands, leaving his palms sticky and his mouth full of saliva.

Charlie gave another little husky laugh. “Well, ain't got no more work for you tonight. Best go enjoy the fruits of your labour,” he said, nodding to the little alcove beneath the Y-shaped staircase in the common room. Just the right size for a small boy with a pocket full of candy to sit and watch the comings and goings of the saloon without being seen.

For a moment, Arthur’s throat seemed to close up with an overwhelming mix of feelings he couldn’t untangle. He shoved a handful of liquorice into his mouth to try to unblock it, and to save him from having to say anything more. The cook gave him an understanding kind of nod and turned back to his stove, and Arthur scuttled off to hide beneath the stairs, chewing furiously and blinking away the tears that threatened to spill. It had been the most confusing few days and he felt as if he’d been picked up by one ankle and shaken all about.

The liquorice was sweet and sickly and a little bitter and it made his teeth hurt, but it had been a long time since he’d had any kind of candy and he planned on eating the whole lot in one go, bellyache be damned. He found himself a comfy spot, leaning against the underside of the stairs, and felt, for just a moment, a kind of contentment.

As the sun dipped towards the horizon, the bar slowly came to life and Arthur watched, unseen from his hiding place as the room filled with men who came to drink away the day’s frustrations; to gamble and argue and laugh and fight and posture and pretend the girls took them upstairs for anything other than payment. He watched the working girls transform from boredom to charm in an instant, defusing disagreements with a well-placed word or touch, raising unspoken red flags between one another when they encountered a man who needed a little encouragement to find someplace else to spend his time, courtesy of Charlie’s sudden looming presence. The boy suspected that had Grimshaw been here, her sharp tongue would’ve done the job just as well.

He couldn’t help but keep one eye on the door – half expecting her to come marching in at any moment, and half hoping to see Dutch and Hosea appear, still dusty from the road, eyes searching him out, eager to admit their mistake in sending him away. Arthur was old enough to know it was a foolish thought, but still young enough to hope – to imagine the scene playing out like an exaggerated pantomime. Dutch would grin and clap him on the back and say he was glad the boy had waited for them. Hosea would offer a quiet smile and a nod, and ask him how he was getting on. And outside, there would be a third horse waiting for Arthur, and a whole wide world to run through. Maybe Miss Grimshaw could come too, perched side-saddle on the back of Dutch’s mare, and that tight, restrained smile of hers might widen into a laugh. Arthur was pretty sure she didn’t hate the man as much as she made out. In fact, he thought it might be the opposite, though he was too afraid to ask.

But it didn’t matter anyhow. It was just a fool’s dream. And no matter how hard the boy stared at the doorway, it wouldn’t make Dutch appear. The clientele was mostly townsfolk, passing travellers, or labourers from nearby ranchers looking for a brief respite. Tired, dull, rundown men. Angry men. Dissatisfied men. Men like his father. And no fairy tale ending was suddenly going to whisk the boy away.

By the time he’d finished his liquorice, the low lull of conversation and the heavy warmth of the evening almost had him nodding off, chin dropping down onto his chest, slow blinks threatening to close his eyes completely – until the sudden mention of his name made him jolt upright, knocking the back of his head against the underside of a stair. Panic gripped him as he looked around for whoever had spoken, and for a moment he wondered if he’d dreamt it until it rang out again, loud and clear and unmistakable: _Morgan_.

Except it wasn’t his name. It was his father’s – and the man who’d said it spat it out like a mouthful of ditch water. Arthur recognised him immediately, like a shock of icy water down his collar – one of the men from the posse: tall and skinny with a pock-marked face and a scrubby beard, eyes glazed with drink, grinning smugly as he regaled a small, bored audience with the tale of his latest bounty.

A sickening kind of shame replaced the cold flush in Arthur’s chest as he watched the pock-faced man brag about how pathetic a prize Lyle Morgan had been; how easy he’d been to track and take in; barely worth the cost of printing a wanted poster. It was the truth, no matter how hard it was to hear, and Arthur was forced to acknowledge a feeling about his father he’d shoved down deep and hidden for many years: embarrassment. The betrayal of it disgusted him. He’d never have admitted it while the man was alive – wouldn’t have dared to, not even in his own head – but now his daddy was dead, the truth seemed stark and cruel and sort of pitiful. A boy was meant to look up to his father, and not simply for fear of a beating, but Lyle had been hard to admire. Difficult to love. He’d never done anything to be proud of, or aspire to, besides somehow convincing Arthur’s mother to marry him. And even then, Arthur wondered if she’d had much of a choice.

The boy’s memories of his mama were faded and soft at the edges, like the old photograph he kept in his satchel. He’d only been seven when she’d passed, and the parts of her he still remembered were vague and abstract: falling asleep to her gentle fingers stroking his forehead; her sweet but tuneless humming as she hung clothes on a line, white shirts flapping in the wind; her lilting accent, sometimes peppered with unfamiliar words from a different land that he could quite never get his tongue around; lying in her lap, curled up like a cat, as their wagon rattled through a woodland trail; the sharpness of her whisper telling him to hide out back when his father’s yelling reached a dangerous peak; a flower in a jar beside his bed: “to remind us of home,” she’d said, though he was far too young to remember anywhere other than the road.

They’d been travellers for as long as Arthur had known, chased by some debt that tracked his father like a wolf. They’d come to America to cash in on a promise of prosperity but the reality had been harsh and unforgiving. His father’s failure was a shadow that seemed to cast the man in disillusionment, snatching away every chance of happiness and dousing him in paranoia and mistrust. To Lyle Morgan’s mind, all his misfortunes were someone else’s fault, and no matter where he went, bad luck followed him. They never settled anywhere for long before Lyle’s ‘bad luck’ would inevitably raise its ugly head once more – usually prompted by a coincidental bout of drinking or fighting or stealing – and they’d be on the run once more.

The man’s talent for rubbing people up the wrong way was incomparable, except when it came to Beatrice. Arthur’s mother never argued. Never raised her voice. Never questioned her husband’s actions. Never answered back. She was about as different from Lyle Morgan as a person could be – and Arthur had never been able to comprehend how or why she put up with him. Perhaps it was fear. Or a way of protecting Arthur from the worst of his father’s rage. Or perhaps she still held some kind of love for the man her husband had once been. It didn’t matter. It didn’t save her. Eventually, Lyle Morgan’s ‘bad luck’ came for her too, and this time it was fatal.

She was gone in an instant. Arthur never really knew how or why – only that his father had been deep in his drink well before sundown, furious and fuming at his failed attempt at finding work. Ranting about how the odds were stacked against him. How none of those uppity town folk knew what a hard day’s work looked like anyhow. How he was twice the man any of them were. How no one appreciated what he did for this damn family. How they ought to respect him, instead of staring at him like that.

Arthur had known what was coming next. Soon his father would run out of words and start using his hands, or his belt. But his mother had been faster, bundling the boy to his feet and sending him off foraging for berries with a hushed whisper and a strained smile. And he’d let her, knowing that she'd be taking the brunt of his daddy's anger. He’d been happy to escape, to wander down by the stream and watch the waterfowl bicker and preen and tip their tails in the air as they rooted in the weeds. By the time he wandered back into their camp the shouting had stopped, but a strange silence had taken its place. His daddy sat staring into the fire as if he’d seen the very devil in the flames. His mama lay in the back of the wagon, still and quiet and horribly pale, and no matter how much Arthur shook her, he couldn’t wake her up.

He didn’t remember much after that – as if a dust storm swept in and turned everything into a walking haze. He didn’t know where she was buried, or if they’d even held a funeral. He didn’t remember crying – though he’d done plenty since – just his father’s cold fingers on the back of his neck; his father’s dull, bloodshot eyes, boring into his own; his father’s voice, flat and toneless, telling him she’d gotten sick, all of a sudden. That nothing could be done about it. That it was just the two of them now. That she was gone.

His daddy rarely spoke of her afterwards, even though her absence loomed over the both of them like a great black cloud blocking out the sun. Lyle’s grief – or guilt, or both – seemed to hollow him out, ‘til he was more poison than man. And, like his mother before him, Arthur learned it was safer to stay quiet, to take the blame, to keep the peace. He got used to being cold and hungry and tired and afraid, until he couldn’t remember any different.

Even so, the boy found it hard to hate his father. He disliked him plenty, most days. Was afraid of him, almost always. But then there were rare, fleeting moments of kindness that flashed like lightning in the dark. A gentleness that didn’t come natural, but was made all the more precious for it. A hint of regret, sometimes. A gruff apology. A brief, stilted show of affection for his son. A vulnerability that seemed to terrify them both whenever it reared its head, and was quickly quenched by drink or anger or violence, or all three.

Arthur knew it didn’t make sense. That a man could be a monster and something pathetic at the same time. That he could pity him, just as he feared him. He’d never understand that one, not as long as he lived. But at eleven years old, with his father’s loss fresh and raw like an open wound, it didn’t matter. He missed the son-of-a-bitch. His useless, drunken, hate-filled father was all the boy’d had left in the world and he’d been taken from him by a smug, pock-faced idiot who sat there laughing about sending his daddy to the gallows like he wasn’t worth the shit on his shoe.

And all that rage and frustration and shame and confusion came rushing out of him like a flood. He found himself on his feet, fists tight at his sides, heart thudding. He didn’t know exactly what he was about to do, but he could feel something of his daddy’s temper firing in his chest as he made a straight line towards the posseman’s table. The men broke off their conversation when they saw him, at first curious, then perturbed, then laughing uneasily at this silent statue of a boy, standing there with eyes like cut glass.

“You want something, boy?” the pock-faced man said, with that same amused sneer he’d had on his face as he’d shit-talked about his bounty.

What Arthur wanted was his knife, but it was back in the kitchen with his bundle of belongings. What he wanted was to jam the blade right into the man’s throat and watch him choke. What he wanted was his father back, and his mother too, and for things to go back to when he was small enough to be carried on his daddy’s shoulders, or his mama’s hip, and there were hot meals every day and a warm wagon to sleep in with his parents breathing softly either side of him.

But he couldn’t have any of that. He couldn’t even find his own voice to call the man a coward. All he could do was stare, unblinking, feeling the fury peel off his skin like heat, until the posseman’s grin faltered a little.

“You deaf, dumb, stupid, or all three?” the man muttered, shoving the boy back a step, “Go on, get out of here.”

It was like lighting a fuse. Something primal that had lain coiled in the boy’s belly unleashed itself with a monstrous roar and he threw himself at the man, all claws and flailing fists and blind vengeance. The posseman’s chair tipped backwards and the two of them crashed to the floor, upsetting the table and sending glasses and bottles and cards raining down all around. Arthur was vaguely aware of shouting voices and shuffling feet and a crowd closing in on their struggle, but all his attention was on the man beneath him. In a contest of strength, the pock-faced man outmatched the boy twice over, but Arthur had the element of utter surprise on his side, and he sat on the man’s chest and pummelled wildly at every part of him he could reach. It was all the posseman could do to try to cover his face with his arms, and for a moment Arthur saw himself from a distance – a wild, scratching, screaming beast, trying to tear its prey to pieces.

And then he was being lifted upwards, half throttled as someone grabbed hold of the back of his shirt and yanked backwards. He stumbled and was caught by rough hands that held him fast and slapped him hard across the face when he tried to scramble back into the fray. The strike snapped his head to the side and re-opened the cut on his lip, filling his head with white cotton.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man holding him demanded, but Arthur’s ears were still buzzing and his vision was blurry, and there was no logical or reasonable answer to give anyhow. It didn’t much seem like his captor cared to know, either. The man was stocky and red-faced, dressed in a fine navy-blue suit, and he looked down at the boy with perplexed disdain. “Who let this little shit in here?”

Mutterings of denial rippled around the room – all eyes on the boy. Arthur saw Charlie at the kitchen doorway, brow furrowed with concern, but the cook didn’t speak up. A trio of girls stood on the stairs, clutching at the handrail, watching the scene with shocked dismay, but not one of them said a word either.

Of course they wouldn’t. Not for a half-crazed boy who they’d barely known a day. They’d given him the benefit of the doubt and he’d ruined it all in an instant. His father’s son indeed.

The boy looked back at the posseman, still lying on the floor, half-propped up on his elbows, one hand stemming a bloody nose, and felt a sliver of gratification that some of his hits had connected, at least.

“You got nothin’ to say for yourself?” the suited man barked in the boy’s face, shaking him by the shoulders until his head wobbled on his neck like a broken doll. The crowd was staring at him as if he were some sort of animal. And maybe that’s exactly what he was. He smiled back with bloody teeth.

“Goddamn feral…” the posseman spat, shaking his head, “Just came at me outta nowhere.” A few surrounding witnesses nodded and murmured their agreement.

“Take him outside and give him a whoppin’,” suggested one.

“Take him to the sheriff,” said another, “Probably pickpocketed the whole damn place, too.”

At that, the crowd reacted like a well-trained sideshow audience and filled the air with jeers and curses. Someone turned out his pockets and his hard-earned coins clattered the floor to a round of outraged gasps. The man holding him hauled him up to his tiptoes by his collar and displayed him to the room like a prize turkey. “I will not stand for this behaviour in my saloon!” he declared, as if he were the goddamn mayor instead of a small town business-owner. “Is no one gonna claim this boy?”

Arthur hung there, humiliated and devoid of hope. Charlie averted his eyes and the girls whispered among themselves, but none of them spoke up to defend him. He didn’t blame them for it, either. But the posseman was watching him curiously, as if perhaps he was beginning to put two and two together, and panic struck the boy like another slap across the face. What if he knew Lyle Morgan had a son? Dutch had said they were looking for an accomplice. What would they do to him if they found out who he was? Would they hang him, too?

The faces surrounding him suddenly felt like a jury, and the walls began to close in, hot and tight and overwhelming. He started struggling again – for his life this time – twisting and squirming out of the man’s grip, scrabbling like a rat through the saloon as the crowd grabbed for him, tearing his sleeves and tripping him on his face. They pinned him to the floor, but still he fought, tears streaking his cheeks, tossing his head from side to side yelling: “let me go!” until his throat was hoarse.

Until a voice he knew came roaring through the chaos and silenced the entire room: “Get off’a him!”

Grimshaw pushed her way through the cluster of goggling townsfolk, dressed all in black like the witch he’d mistaken her for, and her unspoken authority froze everyone in place.

“Let him up,” she ordered sharply, and the hands pressing down on him abruptly lifted. The boy lay there for a second, breathing heavily, fresh tears of relief burning his eyes as the crowd shuffled back and a space cleared around him.

Grimshaw barely even looked at him – her focus was intent on the man in the suit – but when she snapped her fingers at her side the boy got shakily to his feet and came to heel like a dog.

“Now wait a minute–” the man in the suit began, but she ignored him, placing one cool palm on the back of the boy’s neck and whispering out of the corner of her mouth to him:

“Go get your things. There’s a wagon outside. Quick now.”

Arthur hesitated for a moment, expecting someone to stop him, but the people parted before him as he stumbled back through the kitchen to gather up his bundle of belongings.

“You wanna tell me what in hell’s name is going on, Susan?” the suited man said, his face reddening with frustration as he spluttered out a stream of questions: “Who is that brat? Where have you been? And what on earth are you wearing?”

The boy paused in the doorway, unable to take his eyes off Grimshaw, who stood there with perfect poise in the face of the man’s interrogation. “The boy is my responsibility, Mr Jackson, and you won’t lay another hand on him,” she said in a clipped tone, joining Arthur at the door and repeating what she’d said to the boy that very morning. “I need to take care of some business out of town. I’ll be back this evening. I trust you can handle things until then.”

The man stood there, stunned, his mouth opening and shutting soundlessly, his face flushing an ever-deeper shade of crimson. A few bystanders broke the spell, sniggering and whispering, and it seemed to snap Jackson out of his incredulous shock. He was almost shaking with rage and jabbed a warning finger at her, but still couldn’t quite regain control over his tongue: “You… you… goddamn… disrespectful… _woman. _Acting like you’re in charge…”

Arthur felt Grimshaw drawing herself up to her full height beside him, watched her eyes narrow into slits, and in that moment he wouldn’t have traded places with Jackson for all the world. “That’s because I am, and you know it,” she replied in a hushed voice that promised a world of pain to anyone who dared disagree.

No one did. Jackson looked as though he were about to rupture something, but he didn’t have time to say a single word more – Grimshaw swept the boy out of the saloon and up onto the waiting wagon, and with a neat snap of the reins, they jolted down the thoroughfare and left the town of Westbury staring after them.


	4. Chapter 4

They drove a long while before either of them spoke again, down the dusty road south out of Westbury and through the woods to the other side where the plain stretched up towards the horizon for miles.

Arthur could feel Grimshaw trembling a little beside him. Not from the cold, but from all that power she’d drawn out of herself to stand up to her boss, he reckoned. He was shivering himself, now that the fire of his anger had quenched itself. And without it, feeling began to return to his numb fingers and toes; his split lip stung something awful and he ached all over from being tackled to the floor. He felt sick at the thought of what they might’ve done to him if Grimshaw hadn’t turned up when she did – couldn’t help but imagine a rope tightening around his neck, his legs kicking for purchase as it pulled taut and left him dangling …

He resisted the urge to scoot closer to the women on the wagon bench beside him. She wasn’t soft and quiet like the memory of his mother but she held a different kind of comfort: the hard line of her mouth when she’d stood up to Jackson; the steel in her eyes when she’d said, “You won’t lay another hand on him.” Something formidable that couldn’t be shaken.

He wanted to thank her, too – for saving him. Again. And apologise for all the trouble he’d gotten her into. But he was afraid to break the silence. He figured she must still be angry, the way she sat stock upright, glaring ahead as if her eyes might burn a hole in the road, and he didn’t fancy her turning that stare on him.

There was an old familiar tug of shame in his guts as he risked a look sideways at her. He’d made a fine mess of things and they both knew it. He was surprised she didn’t just dump him off the cart right here, in the middle of nowhere, and be done with him.

She caught him looking and let out a long, tired sigh, easing up on the reins and letting the horses set their own pace for a while as she turned in her seat to face the boy. In the half-light he couldn’t quite gauge her expression – part curious and part… amused?

“So,” she said at last, with a tut of her tongue, “You gonna tell me why you were fightin’ like a wildcat back there? Thought I told you to lie low.”

Another layer of guilt rested in his guts. He scuffed his boots against the foot-board. He hadn’t been thinking of Grimshaw’s orders when he’d launched himself at the pock-faced man. Hadn’t thought of much besides the righteous hatred that fuelled him. But that was gone now, given way to cold humiliation at what a fool he’d been – how close he’d come to getting himself caught.

Grimshaw sighed again when the boy said nothing. “He deserve it, at least?” she asked.

He met her eyes, then - jaw half-clenched so his words came out forced. This he _could_ answer. “He was talking shit about my pa.”

She pursed her lips at that, arching one eyebrow. “I see. And was it worth it? Seems like you came off a little worse in this deal, don’t you think?”

He shrugged roughly. “Made him bleed, didn’t I?”

“Uh huh. And riled up a whole mob while you were at it…” She watched him a moment more before turning back to the horses with a thin smile. “Word of advice, Mr Morgan. Don’t let your pride do your thinkin’ for you. Or you’ll spend your whole life fightin’.”

He didn’t have a reply to that. But a part of him thought that even a lifetime of fighting couldn’t satisfy the beast of rage that lay in his belly.

“Honestly,” she muttered, shaking her head, “I leave you alone for a few hours…”

He wanted to protest that it’d been more than a few hours – almost the whole damn day – and he’d _tried _to be good, done everything Charlie asked him, run all those errands for the girls, and how it wasn’t about hurt pride anyhow. It was about standing up to the kind of people who tried to grind you into the dirt. _It takes strength to stay upright when this world beats you down_, Dutch had said. And Arthur had damn well tried to. Just like Grimshaw, standing up to Jackson. Was it really all that different, what he’d done? And maybe, if she hadn't disappeared and left him to fend for himself all that time, maybe none of this would have happened at all.

But he couldn’t put all that into words – and he was well aware of just how thin the ice he stood upon was – so he let the quiet seep back between them for a moment before choosing his next question a little more carefully.

“Where did you go?” he asked her quietly.

She made an impatient tsking sound and snapped at the reins. “Where do you think, boy? Trying to get you out of all this. Get you set up somewhere. You can’t very well stay at the saloon – especially now.”

His heart sank a little. Before his scuffle with the posseman there had been a brief moment where he’d imagined staying on with Grimshaw and Charlie and the girls. Becoming part of the household. A place that was warm and familiar and straightforward. And even though he’d known it was an idle dream – just as unlikely as Dutch and Hosea coming back to claim him – the reality still stung. 

“Well, where we headed to, then?” he asked, peering out into the darkness for some kind of clue.

The sky was fast dimming from purple to a deep blue, and as his eyes adjusted to the changing light Arthur could see a line of mountains breaking up the horizon to the east. He didn’t recognise the country – a mix of grass and scrubland broken up by small stands of trees and a winding river. Westbury lay far behind them now, obscured by the forest. A shiver of apprehension ran through him – or perhaps it was the chill of the evening.

“Somewhere you can’t get into any more trouble,” Grimshaw answered, shooting a sharp, meaningful glance at him. “I’ve made _arrangements_. Somewhere proper.”

He didn’t quite understand what that meant but he held his tongue. It wasn’t as if he had a choice about any of it. But the way she said ‘arrangements’ made him nervous.

“You comin’ too?” he said, in a small, hopeful voice.

She snorted, looking askance at him. “I gotta go back and clear up that mess you left behind you.”

He blinked up at her incredulously. He’d half assumed there would be no going back for either of them. His daddy had always run after causing a ruckus, leaving a trail of disaster behind him, and the boy couldn’t imagine having the guts to go back and try to smooth things over. Jackson had been _furious._ And she’d pretty much called the man out in front of the whole saloon.

“But… You… Jackson said… Won’t you lose your job?”

Grimshaw let out a barking laugh that made him jump. “It’ll take more’n that to get rid of me,” she said, with the first real smile he’d seen on her. “Jackson’ll get over it. Just need to calm him down some. Man likes to imagine he runs the place, that’s all.”

He couldn’t tell if she were lying for his sake, or if he really couldn’t tell the difference between a disaster and a minor disagreement. The world had never made much sense to him, but since his daddy died it had been downright incomprehensible.

“Why’re you helpin’ me?” he blurted, almost angry at the confusion of it all.

She was silent for a short while, considering the question carefully, and then her voice lowered just a touch. “Well… Dutch, I guess.”

He wasn’t sure in the low light but he thought she might be blushing. If she was, she tried to hide it with another tut and a roll of her eyes.

“Dutch and his Robin Hood delusions...”

Arthur didn’t know what that meant either, but he didn’t want to interrupt. Her expression had taken on a thoughtful, almost mournful set.

“But,” she sighed, “for all his _many _faults, he’s got a good heart. Or good intentions, at least. S’pose it must have rubbed off on me.”

And there was that sly sideways smile again. She nudged him with a bony elbow. “Better make the most of it, ‘fore I change my mind.”

Arthur suspected she had a lot more goodness in her than she let on. And Dutch – well, the boy barely knew him. Sure, he’d been awed by the flashy demeanour of the mysterious man on the tall black horse, but Miss Grimshaw had been the one to show her colours when it mattered. He figured if he grew up to be half as tough and a quarter brave as her, he’d be lucky.

The next time he looked up there were lights ahead – a large cluster of low dwellings glowing with yellow lamps. At first, he thought it must be another town from the sheer size of it, but as they got closer he realised it was one sprawling farm, probably half the size of the whole of Westbury.

“Templeton Ranch,” Grimshaw announced grandly. “I have a… friend there. Owes me a favour. He’s put a word in with the overseer for you.”

The boy tried to look grateful, but the thought of being on his own again – of saying goodbye – made him feel sick.

She watched him for a moment, her forehead ruffled with a frown, and then her voice took on a gentleness he hadn’t heard before, “You like animals, Arthur?”

He nodded slowly. “I like… horses?”

“Well, there’ll be plenty o’ horses there,” she said, nodding down at the settlement ahead of them. 

Sometimes he thought he might like horses more than he liked people; the way they talked to you without having to say words, with their movements and their noises and their looks. The way they seemed to know what you were thinking, just from the tiniest shift in position. And that you could learn to read their minds, too – from the flick of an ear or a roll of the eye or a twitch of a muscle. That delicate, unspoken understanding from an animal that asked no more of you than to be kind and patient. It was what he thought the word peace might feel like.

Back when his ma was still with them, a gentle grey boy called Mason had pulled their wagon. The most patient of beasts. Let Arthur ride him long before he was really big enough and never once got uppity. His daddy had sold that old faithful horse, along with the wagon, after his mama died, and Arthur had cried for near three days. And maybe he’d been crying for his mother, too, but in that nightmare daze of a time, the loss of the animal seemed to be far more real.

After that, their steeds had mostly been stolen or traded – none of them matched ol’ Mason’s temperament but Arthur had never met a bad horse, and he took care of ‘em all the same. It was a chance for a moment of quiet, to go and brush down their coarse, dusty coat, make sure they were fed and watered and calm. He’d talk to them, sometimes, in a low whisper that his daddy couldn’t hear. Tell them they were good horses, no matter what crimes they unwittingly got caught up in. Tell them he’d never whip ‘em or mistreat ‘em or run ‘em too hard. Tell them he’d look after ‘em. He’d give them names, too, even though his father said it was stupid. Good, strong names like Charger and Bracken and Lucille and Pepper. And he remembered all of them.

Pepper had been the last – a piebald mare who loved mushrooms and was scared of the river – but she was taken as part of the bounty when they hauled his daddy in. Arthur had seen her there, behind the sheriff’s office, and had half-considered taking her back once the hanging was done. Maybe he would have, too, if Dutch hadn’t scooped him up and carried him off. Maybe it had been a blessing. Maybe he’d have gotten caught and hanged for stealing his own damn horse… Now wouldn’t that have been a legacy to follow in his father’s footsteps?

Regardless, poor Pepper was long gone now. And Grimshaw was right – there were plenty of horses here indeed. A whole ranch-full. Cattle, too. And a bull, out in a pen of his own. A few goats and sheep out to graze on the periphery. A yapping dog, somewhere unseen. He gazed down over the land and couldn’t count high enough to cover all of the animals he saw there. He’d have to learn to talk to more than just horses, it seemed.

A quiet sort of hopefulness crept into his belly as they drew nearer. A tentative wondering that this might not be a bad place to be after all.

Before he had time to doubt it, the track began to wind down towards a wide wooden archway at the entrance of the ranch. Two men stood there, waiting for the wagon to arrive.

Grimshaw took a deep breath and sat up a little straighter. “Well?” she said to the boy, before they came within earshot of the ranchers, “You ready?”

He attempted a nod, his head jangling with nerves. He hadn’t been ready for anything that had happened to him in the past few days but that hadn’t made a blind bit of difference. And it was too late anyhow. As they pulled up to the arch, one of the men waved the wagon to a stop and took hold of the horses, nodding in a familiar way to Grimshaw. The other man tipped his hat and offered the lady a hand down from the wagon, which she took with a graceful little dip of her head. The boy gathered up his things and scrambled down beside her.

Except suddenly she wasn’t Miss Grimshaw any more – she’d transformed, the moment they’d reached the ranch, into someone else entirely. Her voice sweetened and raised in pitch, completely unlike her usual flat, sardonic tone. She kept a faint, strained sort of smile on her face, as if she were trying her hardest to stay polite, despite some deep, inner sadness. And she kept her hand on the man’s arm, leaning in towards him as she spoke, almost as if she was using him to stay upright – as if she were some delicate little thing about to fall. Acting about as different from herself as she could possibly be.

Arthur could only watch in wonderment as she spun a story into the overseer’s ear, and her black outfit finally made sense.

According to _this _Miss Grimshaw, she was the housekeeper of a hotel in a town the boy had never heard of, and the boy was her late cousin’s son, unexpectedly orphaned and left in her care. Bereft, in mourning, and with barely enough money to hire the wagon that brought them here, she had come to beg for a place for the boy. She couldn’t provide for him with her meagre income and long working hours. He needed a trade and a place to grow into the fine young man she knew he would become – a good, wholesome vocation like ranching. This last part she directed at Arthur, one heavy hand on his shoulder, the other clutching a handkerchief to her cheek, as if she were moments away from being overcome with tears.

It was just this side of melodramatic that Arthur was sure the overseer would squint his eye and call her out, but the man seemed so uncomfortable by her emotional entreaty and the over-familiar touching of his arm that he looked likely to agree to anything she said just to make it all stop.

“I’m sure that’d be fine, Miss, now don’t you worry,” the overseer said quickly, and she all but fell into his arms with gratitude, which made him blush straight through his sunburn. “C’n always use an extra hand,” he added, extricating himself from her embrace and turning to the boy as Miss Grimshaw made a show of attempting to compose herself.

“Sorry for your loss, son,” the man said, and for a moment the boy forgot that part of the tale was true – that he really was an orphan and Grimshaw really was going to leave him here and it wasn’t all just a big performance. He managed a brief nod of appreciation, feeling a pang of guilt in his stomach for being complicit in such a bundle of lies, and wondered just how sympathetic the overseer would be if he knew he was really taking on an outlaw’s boy.

“You’ll get a meal and a bed in the bunkhouse with the other hands. Days are long, but you'll get your Sundays off,” the man continued, “I can only give you half wages ‘til you’re sixteen, though, you understand?”

Arthur blinked. He hadn’t expected to be paid at all. Food and a roof was more than he’d known most of his life, let alone money of his own.

Grimshaw saw his reaction and stepped in smoothly to distract from his blank look. “That’s more than generous of you, sir, and we are _ever_ so appreciative, ain't we, Arthur?”

“Yessir. Yes’m,” the boy said automatically.

The overseer gave him a searching look, the same one Hosea had given when he’d called the boy a simpleton, and turned back to Grimshaw, “You, uh, want me to send the money on to you, Miss?”

And Arthur’s stomach dropped again. He was almost afraid to look up at her. He knew this routine all too well – it was just the same has the ones his father pulled: make the kid look as pathetic as possible, then watch some sympathetic sucker empty their pockets. Arthur supposed it was only fair, to be used as a tool for Grimshaw’s con – after all, she’d done all the work, all the lying, all the performance - she might as well be paid for it. He’d just stood there looking like a sad sack of shit. Seemed that’s all he was really good for. 

But then her hand was curling around his shoulder once more, pulling him in to her side for a brief squeeze. “No,” she said firmly, “No, you keep it aside for him. For when he’s older. And _you_,” she said, bending down and turning the boy to face her, “You behave yourself. You save up your wages and you earn your keep and you mind your manners, all right?”

And this time her pained look seemed real enough. Not quite tears, but a tension in her jaw that made it hard to smile properly.

This was it then. She was really going to leave him here.

The boy nodded loosely. It was far too late to object and it wasn’t as if he had any other options besides going feral in the woods. He should be grateful, he knew, that he’d been given a second chance at all, but he couldn’t help but feel like he was being passed on again – from his father to Dutch to Grimshaw to this unsmiling man – like some lame mule that no one really wanted.

The overseer was still watching him, something between impatience and awkward pity on his face. He didn’t seem like a bad man. But he didn’t seem all that moved by Arthur’s story either. And he certainly wasn’t agreeing to the arrangement out of the kindness of his heart – more likely, taking advantage of gaining some extra labour for next to nothing.

And Arthur knew this place, whatever it turned out to be, was never going to be a home. But then, he’d had never really had one to begin with. So what difference did it make?

Grimshaw was still holding onto him, her hard hands gripping at his upper arms, her eyes searching his blank face for something – acquiescence, perhaps, instead of resignation – as if she didn’t want to let go.

The overseer cleared his throat. “You, uh, wanna say your goodbyes, we’ll get this wagon turned around.”

Grimshaw nodded her thanks. Arthur stared at the ground so hard he imagined his eyes burrowing a hole right through it.

“This’ll be a new start for you,” Grimshaw whispered beneath the rumbling of the wagon wheels and the clinking of the harnesses. “It’s what you need.”

The boy shrugged. “Don’t know nothin’ about ranches.”

“So, you’ll learn,” she said, a little too brightly to be believed. “You’re a smart kid. You’ll figure it out.”

He didn’t know how to react to that. He’d been told the opposite all his life by his father. _Dumb, foolish, stupid, dirt-for-brains, idiot child. _He didn’t recognise the boy she thought she saw in front of her.

Her fingers were digging into his arms now, and her words came quicker, more forceful, as if she were trying to shake some sense into him, “Now, listen to me. You stay out of trouble, okay? No fightin’. No stealin’. No cheatin’. You’re out of that life, so stay out. Start over. Work hard. Show the world you’re better than where you come from.”

He looked up at her, finally. Her eyes were fierce and brimming with water, and he felt a sharp pang in his chest for ever doubting her intentions.

He didn’t quite understand why she believed he could do any of that but found he didn’t want to let her down. He nodded. He would try, at least. Try to stay upright.

“Will I see you again?” he asked her, in a tiny voice that cracked just a little.

She smiled faintly. “I ‘spect so.”

The way she said it made him sure she was lying, but he forced a smile in return. Wished he could swallow down the lump in his throat enough to say thank you, at least.

But the men had gotten the wagon facing back up the track and the overseer was waiting politely, if a little impatiently, back at the gate. 

Miss Grimshaw straightened up and a look of panic crossed her face. “Wait, I almost forgot,” she said, and darted over to the wagon, pulling out something dark and oval from under the seat. “Got something for you…”

Before she’d even half way back to the boy he recognised exactly what it was and let out a sudden pained breath as she placed his father’s weathered leather hat into his hands. It smelled like sweat and moonshine and fire smoke and the ghost of his daddy. The boy ran his fingers over the smooth cowhide and the double braided cord that wrapped around the rim in disbelief – as if it were his father himself risen from the grave.

There were no words. Nothing else in the world for a moment besides the object in his hands.

And, when he turned it over, he found something tucked into the inner band – a photograph he’d never seen before; and a face he knew better than any other. His father stood against a wall holding a chalkboard that bore words Arthur couldn’t read, and stared into the camera with eyes that pierced straight though the black and white image and into the boy's ragged heart. 

Grimshaw pressed a palm into the boy’s cheek and another gasping sob escaped him as he finally remembered to take in another breath.

“Be well, Arthur Morgan,” she said, and before either of them could start to crying in earnest, she turned towards to the wagon and she did not look back.

And as the shadows of the evening were swallowed up by the dark, the boy followed the overseer to the bunkhouse, holding his father’s hat between his palms like a prayer.

* * *

Later – years later – still wearing the self-same hat upon his head, Arthur asked her how the hell she’d managed to get hold of it.

And Susan Grimshaw had turned her wry smile upon him, lit up a cigarette, and told a tall tale.

The morning she’d left the saloon in a whirlwind of fury, she’d paid a visit to the sheriff who’d had his daddy hanged. Used the same grieving damsel act she’d used on the overseer. Driven all the way over there and marched right into his office wearing her finest mourning clothes, told him she was Lyle Morgan’s only living relation – some sister-in-law or distant cousin or something – and demanded the right to his personal effects. Threatened to hire a lawyer and all. Given him the full force of that righteous Grimshaw wrath.

Arthur could imagine just how quickly the sheriff must have given in, faced with all that, and kinda wished he’d been there to see it.

There’d been no money, of course – only the photograph they’d taken on his arrest, and, with a little wheedling, the man’s hat, which had been set aside by some sharp-eyed deputy who knew decent leatherwork when he saw it.

And she’d done all that for him. So he'd have something that was his very own. Said she'd reckoned that old battered hat’d probably mean something to a little boy with nothing to remember his father by but curses and bruises.

And maybe, she said, stubbing out her cigarette with a decisive twist, it might remind that boy of what kind of man he was aiming to better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took me a while but here's some tied up threads for this first, fleeting set of meetings. 
> 
> Of course, WE know he's gonna meet back up with them all at some point, but HE doesn't... 
> 
> I have some ideas around what he's gonna do next, but there may be a little time-skip to the next reunion. Requests or suggestions (and kudos and comments) always welcome. Hope you enjoyed it.


	5. Chapter 5

He spent the best part of a year there, all in all. Not counting the times he tried to run away.

And if life on the ranch taught him one thing, it was something he’d secretly known in his heart from the moment his mother died – that no one on this earth gave two shits about him.

Templeton ranch was full of rough men, rough jobs, long days and hard work. Arthur was expected to do as he was told and not complain, but he was used to that, at least. He shovelled a lot of crap. He dug a lot of holes. He fed and watered and brushed the horses and raked the yard and fetched and carried all damn day long until someone passed him a bowl of thin stew and he sank into his bunk without really pausing to taste it.

No one bothered to pay much attention to a scrawny boy with a permanent scowl on his face, so long as he didn’t answer back. There were a few older boys who tried to press him for gossip when he first arrived – curious as to where he came from and why – but they soon got bored of him too, getting nothing but grunts for their efforts. That first night, a rumour went round that the kid couldn’t speak at all, until one of the more patient farm hands managed to coax a response out of him, a few words at a time. But mostly, he was left alone to puzzle out the circumstances that had brought him here, and slowly come to the conclusion that he had been well and truly abandoned.

For weeks, he watched the road for Grimshaw but she didn’t come. He scoured the horizon for a pair of outlaw riders but they never appeared. And despite intermittent moments of kindness from his fellow labourers – a “good job, boy” or an extra slice of cornbread at supper – he decided that it was better not to trust people any more. Sure, folk_ pretended_ to be decent but, deep down, they only really thought of themselves. And no one had sympathy to spare for some cast-off kid. He remembered all too well how Charlie and the girls had stood and stared when Jackson had collared him. How nobody moved to help. How Grimshaw had done her best to clean him up and feed him up but then passed him on like a stray dog. How Dutch and Hosea had taken one look at him and put him straight on a train for the next poor sap to deal with.

His father had been telling him as much for years. _Don’t trust nobody. Ain’t no good intentions that don’t come at a cost. This damn world don’t care about forgiveness, so you might as well take what’s owed to you, ‘cause ain’t nobody gonna give you nothin’._

He started to wonder if his daddy had been right all along. And no one tried to prove otherwise.

He skirted around the other workers as much as possible, getting on with his work with as little interaction as he could manage. The other boys made no real effort to include him in their card games and pranks, besides using him as the butt of whispered jokes, but it only took one attempt to steal his father’s hat for them to discover that the quiet, skinny little boy fought like a cornered cougar. He gave one of them a black eye and bloodied another’s nose before the older labourers split up the fight, half entertained and half disturbed by Arthur’s ferocity. He got a thick ear and a stern warning from the overseer, and was sent to bed with no dinner, but at least the boys left him alone after that.

He retreated even further into himself, preferring the company of the animals, and would have slept out in the stables if they’d have let him. He made it his mission to learn every horse’s name, and was appalled to learn that not all of them had one – caught and broken and trained and sold on without anything to differentiate them. And so, he secretly named them – Dusty and Moonlight and Flash and Blackberry – and spent his free Sundays gathering burdock root and mushrooms for treats. He had mixed success with the other animals. He didn’t much like the cows, and they didn't much like him. The sheep had a tendency to butt him when he wasn't looking, but the dogs followed him like he was the Pied Piper. The one-eared ranch tomcat staunchly ignored him during the day, but would creep into his bunk to sleep on the boy’s chest at night. He even left scraps out for the mice that scuttled across the beams of the bunkhouse. And perhaps he would have found a simple kind of happiness there with the animals, if the humans of the ranch hadn’t turned out to be so disappointingly... human. 

He’d been there less than two weeks before the older men started whispering about Grimshaw. As it turned out, her ‘friend’ - the other man who’d met them at the gate and put in a good word with the overseer - wasn’t a friend at all. He was a customer. And he’d loosened up his mouth one night after too much to drink and broken his promise not to tell. What followed was a colourful array of guesses as to Arthur’s origins. Some secret lovechild. Some whore’s brat. Who on earth his father might be… 

The boy overheard their discussions at dinner with his heart stuffed in his throat, waiting for one of them to land on the right target; terrified of what would happen when they did. His food curdled in his stomach and he shoved his bowl away, wanting to crawl under the table and hide. The men’s laughter and increasingly outlandish suggestions grew louder and louder until there was a sudden hush and a whispered reprimand from one of the older ranch hands: “Enough now. Kid’s just over there.” There was a mass rustling of fabric and creaking of benches as they all turned to look, but he kept his head down, staring at the knots in the tabletop until his eyes watered. A few lingering snickers rippled through the workmen, but eventually the conversation turned to other subjects and the sounds of clattering cutlery returned.

Arthur counted to a hundred before slipping out of the barn, a blinding panic tightening his muscles like the cold grip of a deathly hand. He had to leave. They would figure out who he was somehow and he would be strung up just like his daddy. Maybe on the very beam above his head. His stomach churned at the thought and he brought up his dinner into dirt with a great retching groan.

“What’s got _you _so sick?” came a voice from behind him. It was not a concerned voice – more twisted up with cruel amusement. Arthur looked up with bleary eyes to see one of the other boys, Caleb, standing over him. “Don’t like them talking about your mama like that, huh?”

Arthur wiped his mouth roughly on his sleeve and stood up to his full height, which was still a full head shorter than the other boy. “Ain’t my mama,” he grunted back.

“Ohhh, sure she ain't,” Caleb drawled, kicking soil over the pile of puke at his feet with a distasteful grin. “You grow up in a brothel then? Bet you got some stories…”

Arthur scowled at him, torn between his protectiveness for Grimshaw and the urge to distance himself from the shamefulness Caleb managed to smear his words with. “She ain’t my mama," he repeated, more vehemently this time. "I don’t barely know her.”

Caleb snorted. “Chances are your daddy didn’t neither…”

It took a moment for Arthur to get the joke, and by the time his cheeks coloured more laughter rounded on him as two other boys from the emerged from the evening shadows. Caleb was the eldest and tallest of all of them, almost sixteen and full of frustrated fire and swagger. The others were only a few years older than Arthur and followed their ringleader like scent hounds. One, Henry, was lanky with white blonde hair and a permanent sneer. The other, James, was almost as quiet as Arthur, but no less unfriendly for it. And the lot of them seemed intent in picking up where the older ranch hands had left off.

“So why’d she dump you here then?” Henry prodded.

Arthur ignored him, tried to push past the trio to the bunkhouse, but they formed a barricade, jostling him backwards.

Caleb leaned down to the boy’s eyeline, feigning concern and a babyish voice. “You in some kinda trouble, little rabbit?”

James gave a guttural laugh – his only contribution to most conversations – and Henry clapped a hand to his mouth in mock epiphany. “Maybe his daddy’s _right here_ _on the ranch_.”

The others crowed and cawed at the suggestion, tossing names back and forth between them and sniggering louder at each one – from Grimshaw’s ‘friend to the overseer.

Arthur tried again to get past them but this time Caleb shoved him hard enough that he was pushed off his feet. He landed with a thud, clawing his hands into the soil and biting his lip to stop the prickling of tears.

Caleb stood over him, hands on his hips, sneering over his shoulder at his little gang. “Nah, see, my guess is his daddy’s dead, seeing as he’s always mooning over that stupid hat of his…”

Arthur threw himself at the other boy before his brain even really registered the words, wrapping his skinny arms around Caleb’s waist and ploughing forward until they both went down in a heap. There was a brief, scrabbling wrestle in the dirt, and miraculously, Arthur came out on top – the older boy left winded and puffing for breath as Arthur sat on his chest – but for once his thoughts weren’t on fighting. Flight was more important right now, and he left Caleb lying there dazed as he scrambled on towards the bunkhouse.

A trio of shouts rang out behind him, but he ignored them, bursting through the door and falling to his hands and knees to retrieve his father’s hat from beneath his bed. But as he turned to leave, a figure blocked the doorway, all silhouette aside from his white blonde hair.

“You’re gonna be in so much trouble,” Henry sneered, but his gleeful expression died a sliding death as Arthur approached him slowly and purposefully, whipping back a fist and knocking the smile right off the boy’s face.

It wasn’t quite enough to knock Henry down, but he staggered, leaving a gap big enough for Arthur to slip through the door and out into the night once more, the strangest sense of calm enveloping him like a cloak.

Caleb still lay in the dirt, propped up on one elbow, making a grand fuss of his injured pride with James fawning at his side. Henry retreated towards them, clutching at his jaw, staring at Arthur as if he were a feral dog. “I’m tellin’,” he whimpered, turning tail and scurrying back to the warm glow of the barn.

Arthur turned his back on all of them. A stretch of darkness lay between him and freedom – the empty courtyard, dusty in the moonlight, and beyond, the perimeter fence. He took a breath, let it out, and started off in the direction he and Grimshaw had come from, a few weeks before.

* * *

He ran through the night, sticking to the woodland at the side of the road as much as possible, feeling more and more a fool the further away he got. He’d made a mess of things again. It seemed to be all he was good for. More than once he considered turning back, but the fear of discovery spurned him on, footsore and snot-nosed and bitter-tongued. After the heat of adrenaline had worked itself out of his bloodstream, he came to realise that he hadn’t come off so well in the scuffle with Caleb after all – his ribs ached when he pressed them, and his left eye socket had begun to swell. He hadn't even felt the blows at the time, and hoped he’d at least given the older boy something similar to think about. He didn’t know why they’d picked on him like that. Perhaps he’d played the victim so often for his daddy’s schemes that it was all anyone saw when they looked at him.

The road went on forever, and as the dusky sky gave way to a clear midnight blue, the temperature dropped to a chill. He kept moving to keep from freezing, not even sure he was heading in the right direction any more. Everything looked different in the dark. At every fork in the trail he would find a pole with pointed wooden signs on it, but didn’t have the learning to read them. He took what he thought was the northerly path, towards what he hoped was Westbury, but eventually his legs would carry him no further and dawn found him curled up in the roots of a tree at a crossroads atop a hill. He hadn’t been able to decide on a direction and had slumped against the tree, too tired to even cry, and the night had claimed his consciousness with a shiver.

He woke to the sound of rattling, squeaking wagon wheels that stopped beside him. His limbs were stuck in a stiff knot, and it took him a moment to realise the sound of boots was heading right for him, blinking into the rising sun. He jolted when a shadow fell across his face, followed by a long sigh that stunk of bitter coffee.

“You alive there, little fella?” a wrinkled, peering face asked him. An old man with a handful of teeth and a wide straw hat crouched by the tree, closely followed by a shaggy collie dog who sniffed at Arthur’s feet.

The boy nodded, as though the question really needed answering, and muttered an apology, in case that was necessary too.

“You been out here all night?” the man said, a frown deepening the lines on his face.

Arthur shrugged. The dog moved its sniffing up his legs to his hand, then his elbow, before finally nuzzling into his armpit for good measure. He combed his fingers through its matted fur and breathed in its earthy canine scent. The animal was so warm he wanted to hold onto it forever. Now that his brain had woken up some, it was just coming to realise how cold and wet he was, covered in morning dew, and a shudder ran through him.

The old man gave a tut and creaked his way back upright, gesturing to his wagon. “Well, you're a fair while from home, I reckon. You want a ride someplace?”

Arthur shook his head. He didn’t have the energy left to trust or owe anybody anything. He struggled to his feet, using the tree trunk for support, and the dog cheered him on with a series of soft yips. The boy took a few tentative steps to work the pinpricks out of his muscles, ruffling the collie’s head every time it bounced up against him.

The old man sized him up, unconvinced. “You sure ‘bout that?”

Arthur tried a smile instead of a scowl but he didn’t think it was very convincing. “I’ll be fine,” he muttered, more to himself than anything. He didn’t never want to need nobody's help ever again.

The old fella gave a one-shouldered shrug and another bubbling sigh. “Alright then, kid. Be well,” he said, and turned back to his wagon, whistling for the dog to follow.

Arthur blinked after them, and then at the crossroad sign, which was no more decipherable than it had been the night before. “Wait!” he yelped, as the man clambered up onto the squeaky spring seat. “Which way’s Westbury?”

The old man pointed north-west, where the road curved down towards a settlement nestled between woods and a canyon edge. "Y'almost made it," he said with a gappy rin. 

The boy recognised the town at the foot of the hill clearly in the daylight and felt even more stupid than usual. He’d been so close, just a couple of miles away, but the mask of night had made his tiny world seem vast as an ocean.

The dog barked a farewell and the man tipped his straw hat as the wagon rattled its way down the eastern road, and Arthur nodded his thanks to them both before forcing his feet to do their job and setting off down the hill.

* * *

He made it to the edge of town by mid-morning and hid in the woods behind the saloon, waiting for a glimpse of Grimshaw. He wasn’t stupid enough to go knock on the back door – to risk Charlie or one of the girls or that bastard Jackson to catch sight of him – but he had to see her. Had to warn her about the gossip at the ranch. He knew it was a foolish plan to come back to Westbury, and he told himself he was doing it for noble reasons, but the lost, scared, lonely part of him just wanted to see her again. To see a face that cared. 

And, after an hour of crouching in the bracken, he got his wish. She came out yelling something over her shoulder and stomped her way down the steps to the yard, lighting one of her slim cigarellos and propping her elbow on her hip. It took him four attempts to hit the bucket by her feet with a pebble, but the last one connected with a dull but satisfying clang. Her head snapped sideways and she squinted into the trees with those eagle eyes of hers, swearing so blue it made the boy blush when she caught sight of him squatting there.

She tossed her cigarette away, hitched up her skirts, and hurried into the woods muttering a string of curses that ended with the boy’s name. She didn’t stop when she reached him but snatched up his arm and marched them deeper into the trees.

“What the _hell_ are you doing here?” she hissed, once she decided they were far enough away from the saloon. She didn’t wait for him to answer, bending down to examine his dirty face, his road-dusty clothes, and his brand new shiner. “Did you _walk _all this way? Lord have mercy, what were you thinkin’, Arthur?” His throat was too tight to reply anyway, and she interpreted his silence with suspicion, holding him at arm’s length. “Arthur? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!” he insisted, which was partly true. He didn’t start it, at least. And under her stony gaze, the story came tumbling out of him – her so-called friend, telling the men who she really was; all their speculating about his daddy; the boys, messing with him, pushing him down, threatening to steal his hat… It all sounded much less serious when he said it out loud. 

She stopped him there, her soothing hands pressing down on his shoulders as if she were afraid he was about to take off again. “And you ran?” she finished for him. He nodded, wishing she wasn't so calm. So... disappointed. 

"Oh, Arthur..." 

“They know who you are,” he repeated, trying to get across the seriousness of the situation. “They’ll… they’ll figure out who I am, too.”

But she was already shaking her head in that way adults did when they thought you were being a stupid, naïve kid. “They ain’t gonna ever know who you are, Arthur. Don’t you fuss about that. They _are _gonna be sore that you ran off on them, though.”

He gaped at her. “But… They know you lied.” And his cheeks burned with the memory of the things they’d said about what she did for a living. The things they’d said about her. How he'd felt embarrassed when they'd thought he was her son.

She fixed him with a flat look. “Arthur, you really think the rest of those ranch hands come from happy little families? The lot of ‘em are orphans and runaways and… men with dubious pasts. You think they’re gonna shut the whole place down to chase after one scrappy little kid?”

She said it with a twisted smile, trying to make light of things, but he took it like a slug to the heart. It was just as he’d always known – no one really, truly, cared what happened to him. He could disappear and they wouldn’t bat an eyelid. Maybe they hadn’t even noticed he was gone.

Grimshaw seemed to realise her mistake, seeing the downcast realisation on his face, and gripped him by the back of the neck, forcing him to look at her.

“What I mean is: this ain’t life or death, Arthur. You gotta stop runnin’.”

But running was about the only thing his father had ever taught him. And Lyle had burned that lesson deep into the boy’s soul. 

“Where’m I s’posed to go, then?” he asked miserably.

She straightened up, lifting his chin as she did so. “"You’re going right back to that ranch," she said, in a voice as hard as iron. "You make a mistake, you darn well fix it, Arthur Morgan,"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. Been a while. 
> 
> Wow, the world is weird right now. I'm trying to fill the weirdness with writing. I'd intended a bit of a summary/timeskip for this chapter but it kind of accidentally carried on in a linear fashion. So he's heading back to the ranch but he won't be there forever - he has a meeting with destiny (and Dutch and Hosea) not long down the road... 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed my continuing to put poor Baby!Arthur in increasingly angsty situations. I appreciate every comment and kudos heart. x


End file.
